Changed Circle
by Warringer
Summary: Babylon 5 AU. Vorlon plans for the humans get screwed up.
1. Chapter 1

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Prolog

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Dr. Samuel Wilkins was a man driven by one great thing in his life. It was something that may make him a more or less stereotypical 'mad scientist', but one of the good kind. He was obsessed with the fact that mankind was not intelligent enough, at least for him. And he was searching for a way to change that. So he tried to find a way to change the DNA of any human to become more intelligent.

The interesting thing about his tries however was the fact that he used some DNA strands of several different animals to create a virus that would change mankind to become more intelligent.

It was the late year 2008 that he had been successful, creating a retrovirus that would make mankind more intelligent. He didn't test it as he started to spread the highly infectious and after two days with flue like symptoms the change to a more intelligent mankind would become true.

Unknowingly, Dr. Wilkins had changed the plans of two very old races that had changed the genetic code of a good number of races, the plans of the Vorlons ans Shadows. Both had changed to genetic code of the races to make them dependent on them unable to move beyond specific boarders that were deemed to dangerous. The virus however effectively destroyed all those changes in the genetic code of mankind by rewriting those changed parts with parts from animals that had remained unchanged.

Mankind became more intelligent, but not in the way Dr. Wilkins had thought it would be. He only removed the borders in the minds of the people, making it possible for them to think of other things than those they had been thinking before. But tragically Dr. Wilkins never learned of his 'failure', as he died in a car crash only one week after releasing the virus.

Mankind started to grow in another direction as they would have with the genetic tempering of the old races. Of cause that didn't mean that they became more peacful. No they continued to fight wars, militaristic, political or economical wars. But the pace of development was changed and the range of development grew.

In 2045 material sciences were so advanced that the United States of America were able to build an orbital lift at the equator south of Hawaii, making access to space cheaper. Other orbital lifts followed, build near the island Sao Tome in Africa, somewhere in Indonesia and in Brasil.

Only two years after the first orbital lift, a small company in Spain made a breakthrough in a system that had bothered mankind since the later 20th century, when Professor Podkletnov discovered a way to shield gravity with super conductive materials. With the first anti gravity device, man started to get deeper into the matter or gravitational manipulation.

Until 2060, two new breakthroughs were made, as scientists nearly managed to solve the GUT, but they didn't manage it. Instead they discovered a way to create Tachyons and the mathematical possibility of a 'hyperspace'.

Gravimetrical engines were introduced in 2075 and with them ships were able to accelerate with several dozen times Earth gravity without having to worry about inetial. Trips to the Mars colonies near Olympos Mons and Vallis Marinieris became shorter and the population of Mars grew to more than 40 million in the year 2090.

Mars wasn't the only colony of mankind and in 2100 one billion people were living outside of mother Earth and 8 billion on Earth itself. Earth was now commonly referred as Terra all over the system even on Earth.

But problems remained and after the wars of the 21th century, one nearly became WWIII, the countries of Terra grew closer, eventually forming the Terran Union a state that included the best parts of the European Union and the United Stares of America. The colonies were an essential part of the Terran Union and every colony with more than two million inhabitants were considered their own member state of the Union, binding them to the Union, while making them more or less independent.

In space, new technologies were discovered. By using near solutions of the GUT, scientists were able to create forcefields, but they were only strong enough to hold air inside a hangar or a ships in case of a hull breach. The issues with these force fields couldn't been solved for a long time to come. Other uses of the force fields were fusion reactors where they reduced the size of the reactor greatly.

Weapons were also developed. The Terran Union had a small number of armed ships, armored with nano manufactured high density carbon alloys and armed with small railguns and particle weapons, they were able to hold the small pirate problem in check. It was a rather fast pace from low velocity rails guns to railguns that shot projectiles at ten percent the speed of light. Using the force fields, it was even possible to contain a fusion plasma and prevent it from dissolving until it hit the target, creating both an EM pulse and melting the hull plating.

Mankind was near the discovery of their own hyperspace drive, when the Centauri came and introduced the Jump Gate system. Mankind was more than ready for the stars and they were going to them in the same way settlers of old had gone to America. Only this time they were ready to believe that any alien was their equal. It was strange that this race of primates was able to become friends with so many races in so little time, sometimes even acting as negotiators between two races.

Mankind was on their way to become the most respected race besides the Minbari, who hadn't met mankind yet.


	2. Chapter 2

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter One

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The _Von Braun_ floated between the stars, its gravimetric engines slowly pushing it towards the single planet of this system.

Intel reports coming from several reliable sources told that this system was held by a race called Minbari and the Terran Union wanted to meet them and open diplomatic contacts.

The _Von Braun_ was the only ship that had been send to this system. But still it was considered a show of force towards many of the other races in Known Space. The ship was an attack carrier a cross between a battle ship and a carrier for bombers and fighters, in itself capable of laying waste to a small force of ships, and it had shown this during the Dilgar War.

It was of the generally ulitarian design like all Terran Warships and ugly compared to the ships of the other races, but it did its job.

Aboard Colonel Jason Willks was a little nervous about this meeting. He glanced over to Lieutenant Xoral, the Dilgar that happened to be navigator of the _Von Braun _and remembered a little of the history of the Dilgar War.

The Dilgar had attacked the League of Non Aligned Worlds about 40 years ago and the Terran Union had tried to talk to them, but the result was that the Dilgar had attacked Terran controlled space. The Union had responded in kind and after two years and countless battles, the Union had successfully invaded every world controlled by the Dilgar.

The League and the Narn had wanted to isolate the Dilgar, but the Union found out just why the Dilgar had started the war and did what human had several times since World War II, they helped their old enemies. The Dilgar colonies had become a Terran Protectorate and new colonies were founded on neighbor worlds. In an unparalleled act of technology and economical might, a billion Dilgar had been evacuated from the Dilgar home system and to the new colonies. Than the sun of the Dilgar homeworld went Nova and destroyed everything in the system, but about one billion Dilgar were saved from extinction. Now the Dilgar worlds were part of the Terran Union and Dilgar had began to file into the Armed Forces.

"Multiple Contacts, unknown configuration," the sensory chief said suddenly and Willks nodded.

"Yellow Alert," he said.

He didn't hope that it would come to a fight, but it didn't hurt to be prepared.

Deep inside the computer core of the _Von Braun_ something happened. Code lines more than a century old started to influence the AEGIS weapon control system of the ship as the sensory systems took measure of frequency blocks that were considered an electronic weapon.

"We are being scanned," the sensory chief said," high band EM emissions. I don't think that they will get much data."

The AEGIS system switched modes as it analyzed the data coming from the sensory systems. A century ago, this EM emissions would have been enough to scramble the computer systems of any ships, but technology had advanced and today the systems were not as sensitive as before.

"Looks like they have their gun ports open," the sensory chief said," But they are not powering up their weapons."

Willks nodded. Maybe this was some form of first contact behavior of the Minbari. He knew enough about alien psychology to know that not every race though as the humans.

"What the..." he suddenly heard the voice of the tactical officer and red lights started to blink throughout the ship.

"RED ALERT," a computerized voice bellowed," RED ALERT!"

Willks turned to the tactical officer.

"What's going on?"

"The AEGIS system switched to Armageddon mode, something about EM emissions. It targets the lead ships of the Minbari."

Willks swallowed.

"Deactivate it!"

"I'm trying!"

The AEGIS system went through all targeting solutions and sensory data before deciding on the right course of action. The massive four Gauss Turrets of the ship went online, their ten meter barrels turning towards the largest of the Minbari ships. Coming down to a sollution the AEGIS system opened fire and a a ten second salvo of Gauss projectiles moving at ten percent the speed of light speed towards the Minbari. Not even a second after firing the projectiles ripped into the crystalline armor of the ship and after ten seconds it was crippled by more than a hundred Gauss Projectiles.

"FUCK!" the tactical officer cursed as he deactivated the AEGIS system, seconds too late.

"We cripples the lead ship," Willks heard the sensory chief," and the other ships don't look happy about it."

"Get us the hell away from here," Willks just said.

With that the Dilgar Navigator powered up the String Drive and the _Von Braun_ latched onto the next cosmic string, using it like a monorail to disappear at FTL speeds.

Thus the War between the Terran Union and the Minbari Federation began, with a bug in the computerized weapon control system.


	3. Chapter 3

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Two

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"All this just because of a freaking software bug?"

General Aden Kors slammed his fists onto the heavy oak desk of his Pentagon Office. His eyes were narrowed as he started at the head of Internal Naval Investigations, Preston Mayers. INI had literally taken apart the Von Braun over the last two month, desperately trying to find out why the ship just had fired on the Minbari all by itself and started the war.

Now INI had found out why it had happened and it didn't make Kors a bit happy.

"A code fragment from one of the first AEGIS systems used in space, General," Modern software is so complex that not even an AI can clean up the source code completely. It was just forgotten."

"Damnit," Kors cursed.

The fleet had engaged the Minbari four times now and it had ended with heavy causalities on Terran side because the Minbari had come in force and just punched through the unprepared defenders. And in all cases it happened to be a newly build up colony with only a few ships defending them.

Kors closed his eyes for a moment and his fingers went through his hair.

"Thank you, Preston," he finally said," I'm going to tell the President."

Mayers nodded and the holographic projection showing the head of the INI disappeared.

Kors breathed in deep and tried to calm down.

"McArthur," he called out and another holographic projection appeared in the room, showing the avatar of the Pentagons AI, a copy of McArthur.

"What can I do for you, General?"

"I want the status of our Battle Plates."

McArthur raised an eyebrow for a moment.

"_Scapa_ _Flow_ is currently operating in Alaca near Abbai space to prevent the League to get the wrong ideas about the Dilgar now that we are at war with the Minbari. The same is true for _Wilhelmshafen_ which is operating in Trembas."

Kors silently cursed. Two of five the five Terran Battle Plates were operating in former Dilgar space. Now with the war with the Minbari, the Senate had justified doubts that the League wouldn't attack the remaining Dilgar.

"_Vladivostok_ is operating in the Eridani systems. It's sensory systems are the best we have and the ONI are interested in the strange emissions coming from one of the planets. _Norfolk_ operats near the Centauri Border because of repeated Raider attacks on Terran mercenaries the CIA believe have contacts to the house Refa of the Centauri. _Pearl_ _Harbor_ is currently in the Trogok system because the League has requested help with a rather large incident that ripped apart several orbital habitats."

Kors eyes narrowed. Three of the mightiest battle ships ever build by the Union, who happened to be in Earth space, were tied down in two intelligence operations, while the third was giving humanitarian aid.

He grit his teeth. The emissions of that planet in Eridani wouldn't get away and the Raiders could be held of by a few cruisers. But the habitats had to be repaired and the Union had to give the League and the rest a nice show by doing so.

"I want _Vladivostok_ and _Norfolk_ removed from their current operations and send towards Jericho."

"The ONI And the CIA won't be very pleased."

"We are at war," Kor stated," And those Battle Plates are needed."

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BattlePlates were large objects, larger than anything else build by mankind. And she was the oldest Battle Plate. The first, _Norfolk_, had been build more than a hundred years ago and had been projected at one of a kind, but later the Pentagon had decided to build a few more. But just because she was old, didn't mean that she wasn't one of the most technological advanced vessels of the Terran Fleet.

They resembled giant plates with eight kilometers diameter and a hight of one and a half kilometers. They weren't dedicated battle ships, even if they carried more firepower than an entire Task Force. They were also carriers, able to hold several squadrons worth of long range bombers and interceptors with String Drives, depots capable of supplying a battle fleet over six month and complete dry docks able to service two Task Forces at once.

Battle Plates like _Norfolk_ were normally operating in Interstellar space between the stars or in the outer reaches of a system, not taking part in the battle on their own, rather letting their bombers and interceptors do long range precision strikes against military targets or enemy ships.

Of cause this was only possible with the use of the String Drive. It had been developed just a few years after the First Contact with the Centauri. It was based on a part sollution of the GUT, the String Theory. Combined with the Force Field technology mankind had found a way to use cosmic strings to move at FTL speeds.

But the String Drive wasn't very fast, they were only capable of reaching speed up to fifty times the speed of light, while Jump Space allowed much higher speeds. Another thing was that the speed was inverse dependent to the mass of the vessel using the Drive. The more massive the ships, the less fast it could move along a string. While fighters and bombers reached speed of up to 50c, larger ships were slower and a Battle Plate only moved with up to 5c along a string.

The good parts were that they could build into just about every ship or fighter, allowing tactical use to move fast into battle and out of battle. So they were in use.


	4. Chapter 4

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Three

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Lieutenant (jg) Mohamed Ibn Abbaz was a good man. He was a religious Muslim, born in Dubai, had visited Mekka twice and was a good Marine with every option for his career in the Terran Union Armed Forces. And he was a Mutant.

Mutants had appeared in the human history in the first half of the 21th century, when new born children turned up with animalistic traits marking their bodies. Things like slitted pupils, tails, claws instead of fingernails, mostly that kind of thing. But there were also children that were a Furries dream come true, looking like anthropomorphic animals. It had been an uproar in the world when that happened and the scientists had blamed the much higher radiation levels of the environment during the second half of the 20th century. In truth this was a side effect of the virus Dr. Samuel Wilkins had released in 2008 in an attempt to make mankind smarter.

And Lieutenant (jg) Mohamed Ibn Abbaz was one of these Mutants, a Full Morph, as his kind of mutation was called, being an anthropomorphic version of a Siberian Tiger. Talk about irony.

Right now Mohamed was sharing a holding cell with a Japanese Full Morph Fox, Marine Gunnery Sergeant Hiro Jamamoto, aboard a Minbai ship. The rescue pod that had been full with Marines of Mohamed's platoon had been picked up by the Minbari during the battle of Delphi, only a week ago and the third attack of the Minbari on Terran space.

Mohamed and Hiro had tried to get out of the cell, but not even Mohamed's strength had been able to open the door to the holding cell. They also had tried to talk to the other prisoners of the Platoon, but again they hadn't much success.

So Hiro was sitting on one of the strange tilted beds, idly playing with the tip of his tail, while Mohamed was kneeling on the deck, mumbling passages of the Koran while reading them of a holographic display of a small electronic Koran that hung around his neck in form of a Muslim half moon.

"Do you ever grow tired of reading that, LT?" Hiro asked suddenly.

"Not really," Mohamed answered," It has been some time since I have read the Koran."

"Oh?"

Hiro raised an eyebrow. He knew the LT for a few years now and the only time he hadn't seen him pray towards Mekka, the stern of a space ship according to Muslim convention, was when they were on a mission. Heck, he even prayed here three times a day.

"Shouldn't we look for a way to get out of here?"

Mohamed looked at Hiro.

"We have been over this a few times, Gunny. The door is to strong for even me, the 'my friend is ill' trick didn't work and the air ducts are to small for either of us."

"There has to be a way."

"You always drag that you are a 'Kitsune', Gunny. Why don't you change shape to a Minbari and get us out of here."

"Har de Har Har," Hiro made and crossed his arms over his chest," Very funny, LT."

There was a silent between Mohamed and Hiro. Finally Mohamed shook his head.

"Sorry, Gunny."

Hiro sighed in response.

"No problem, LT."

Just shortly after that the door to the holding cell opened and a Minbari entered, a weapon pointed at the two Marines. He made a motion with his arm.

"Come," he simply said and glared at them.

"Well, that is new, LT," Hiro said," Wonder what they want."

"Shut up, Gunny, and come."

The stepped out of the cell and into a long corridor with other doors to holding cells and into the fire arcs of several other Minbari. The Minbari that had opened the cell motioned toards one end of the corridor and the two Marines could only follow the orders of the Minbari. Sure the two Mutants were able to take down some of the Minbari with ease, like they had done after their pod was 'rescued', but there were a few too many Minbari.

After a walk of maybe two minutes they were led into a larger room, with more armed guards and one Minbari that was different to the others. The guards that had brought them to the room mentioned them to stand in the middle and after some moments two other Marines were brought into the room, to normal human this time.

The now four Marines exchanged looks and a few hand signals, in thew end agreeing that it wasn't good to try and get free with now twenty Guards in the room. Obviously the Minbari had learned from their loss of their men against a Platoon of Marines.

The other clad Minbari glared at the four Marines and than proceeded to walk around them twice, looking over them again and again.

"Terrans," he spat out," integrate other races into their society and military."

The four Marines just stood there, looking forward and through the Minbari. Than he walked up to Mohamed who was about a foot taller.

"Who are you?" he asked with narrowed eyes.

"Ibn Abbaz, Mohamed, Lieutenant Junior Grade, Terran Union Marine Corps, ID-Number One-Zero-Two-Echo-Foxtrot-Niner-Zero-Zero-Whiskey-Nine-Two."

The eyes of the Minbari narrowed further.

"What are you?"

"Human."

The Minbari suddenly had a short stick in his hands, which suddenly got longer and slammed into one of Mohamed's knees. It took all his self-control not to flinch or even acknowledge the hit. Not getting the response the Minbari wanted the stick slammed into the knee again and again he hid any reaction. Only the third hit got a response out of Mohamed, even if it was only a flinch.

"You are not human," the Minbari spat out, his face had changed color and he looked like he was about to loose his temper," You can't be human."

"Being human is a state of mind," Mohamed just said," And test my DNA if you don't belive me."

"Silence," the Minbari snapped and again the stick found Mohamed's knee," You only talk if I order you to talk."

"Fuck yourself," one of the normal human Marines said and the response resulted in a shattered knee cap.

Mohamed had the feeling that this would be a long day.


	5. Chapter 5

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Four

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Aylt Sural closed his eyes. His fleet was just about to engage the Terran Union in one of their systems, called Jericho. The _Burning_ _Sword_ would come down on the Terran like its namesake. They would pay for what they had done. They had approached the ship of the Gray Council six week ago and opened fire at it without warning. All members of the Council had been injured to a certain degree, but Satai Dukhat had been worst of. A beam of the ships hull had knocked him down and served his spine, crippling him. It had been a wonder that he had survived at all. And he still was in a state of coma.

The Terrans would pay for such imprudence and their way would cease to exist in the galaxy. Every race in their right mind would have turned their backs on the Dilgar after such a war and they would have ceased to exist in the nova that had destroyed their home system. The Terrans must be mad to help a race like the Dilgar. Even if the Terrans hadn't attacked the Minbari, it would only have been a matter of time until the Dilgar would have put a dagger into the Terrans back and destroyed them.

But it wouldn't come that far. The Minbari would destroy the Terran Union, the Terrans, the Dilgar and those strange servitor races that the Terrans seemed to have created. And Sural was one of those who would make sure that that happened.

The Angla'shok had scouted out the Jericho system and they had found that it was a perfect target. It was a large colony by the standards of most races, but as far as the Angla'shok knew about the Terrans, they considered it a minor colony. 500.000 people one a colony planet wasn't minor, but it would be the same as in Delphi, Deneb, Kandhi and Signet. The few ships guarding the colony and the colony itself would cease to exist.

Another step towards the destruction of the Terrans and their imprudent ways.

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Jericho was busy. Just one day ago a pair of the largest vessels ever build by the Terran Union had entered the system with their escorts. And now the Battle Plates _Norfolk_ and _Vladivostok_ were orbiting Jericho, ready for deployment towards the Minbari Federation.

General Mick Dawson was sitting in the planning center of _Norfolk_ and looked at the data Einstein, the AI of _Norfolk_, provided him with. It was everything they had got about the Minbari. Simulations of the four engagements with the Minbari were shown in several overlaying holographic projections.

Dawson frowned. The Minbari had some form of active Stealth system unknown to the Union and the Union had no way of countering it at this moment. This Stealth system, combined with the low number of old vessels that were part of the Frontier Defense fleet in the attacked systems, had lead to the defeat of the Navy in all four cases and the destruction of all four colonies. More than three million people had lost their lives on the four planets. All thanks to a fucking computer bug and a race that seemed to show the rest of Known Space just how Bad Ass they were.

But they would look around in wonder if the Union started to attack them.

Thankfully there were enough scientific sensory satellites in the attacked systems to at least have some data about the battles. The Stealth of the Minbari worked in a way like the first primitive stealth systems used during the 20th century on Earth. They bend and broke the scanner emissions and only reflected little back, making it very difficult to target the ships. The data showed that only about a tenth of the attacks of ht Frontier Defense units had impacted in the Minbari ships.

Another thing was the fact that strange emissions had been measured before the battle, right before the Minbari ships had opened jump points right inside the formations of the fleets, already destroying about half of the ships without even firing one shot.

Data on the Minbari weapons weren't available at the moment, but the damages on the second generation uni-molecular carbon hulls of the Frontier Defense vessels had told that those weapons were dangerous. But the Fourth generation armor of Battle Fleet units were much more effective.

The Minbari hadn't lost one vessel during the four engagements, while Frontier Defense had lost nearly a hundred. And the worse was that no one had an idea how many Minbari ships had taken part in these engagements.

"General," Eintstein suddenly said," I am measuring the same strange emissions the scientific satellites measured before the engagements with the Minbari."

Dawson blinked for a moment, before it hit him like a ton of bricks. The Minbari were able to scan from Jump Space.

"All ships leave their position with String Drive, now!"

Einstein blinked at Dawsons reaction, but still followed the order.

"Forming Jump points," he said at the same time as _Norfolk_ slipped into the next string and moved away from its position at 2 times the speed of light.

A projection appeared in the room, showing what happened in real time. The three hundred vessels of Battle Fleet, including the two Battle Plates and their one hundred escorts, had burst out into every direction, engaging their String Drives to get away from their old positions, positions that were now the center of several jump points.

"I want every ship to enter a standard frigate screen formation as soon as the jump points close. All carriers and the Battle Plates launch their fighters."

Dawson looked at the projection. The _Norfolk_ was now about a light second distant to the place where it had been only half a minute ago and the AI of the Battle Plate was organizing the formation in sync with Korolew of _Vladivostok_.

Battle ships were taking flaking positions above and below the two Battle Plates as the Plates moved to present their largest sides to the enemy. Cruisers got into position left and right of the Plates, while the frigates took the front line positions, mixed with squadrons of fighters, while bombers were positioning themselves between the front lines and the Plates and the carriers trailed the whole fleet.

"Showtime."

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Aylt Sural was a little concerned. His fleet had scanned normal space before leaving jump space and they had found several hundred ships in orbit around the planet. The jump points had been carefully placed for maximum destruction in this fleet and the fast defeat of the primitive Terran ships.

But something strange had happened. The whole Terran fleet had disappeared as they left jump space and the brown orb of Jericho was floating in front of the fleet. How could it be possible that three hundred vessels disappeared just like that?

Sural's blood ran cold as he thought about the ramifications of this. The Terrans were in league with the Shadows! That was the only possible explanation for the sudden lack of targets.

"Aylt, the Terran ships are back. And..."

The sensory technician trailed of as he stared at the two large contacts in the center of the Terran formation. He had never seen a ship that large. And they were putting out sensory emissions like cheap candy.

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Battle Plates were designed to operate a long distant to the real target and as such a Battle Plate had the most powerful sensors of all Terran ships. Even a Battle ship only had about 5 percent of the sheer power output of a Battle Plate.

And while the sensory systems of the Battle Plates were designed to be operating at extreme ranges, a point black range they were burning their way straight through the sensory stealth of the Minbari.

As the fleet dropped out of a coordinated String Drive flight, five Sharlins, ten Tinashis and about a hundred fighters were left without cover and ready for the Fleet.

Frigates and fighters moved in on the Minbari, opening fire at the fighters, just slapping them out of the sky in mere minutes, while cruisers, battleships and the two Battle Plates opened fire at the capital vessels. Not to destroy, but to cripple. Drive fins were separated from the main bodies by gauss fire, reactor sections blown open by concentrated Gamma laser bombardment.

Not even ten minutes after the first measuring of the Minbari sensors by _Norfolk_, the fifth engagement with the Minbari ended as complete victory for the Terran Union.


	6. Chapter 6

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Five

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With a loud bang the assault drop ship made itself known as it clamped down onto the crystalline hull of a Sharlin cruiser that had been crippled during the First Battle of Jericho. Like all of its brethren it was unable to fight or flee from the field of defeat.

For the first time in a millennium the Minbari had been defeated in battle. And that happened by the youngest race of Known Space, the humans. They only had about one century and a few decades time to get themselves known in this area of space and they already they controlled the largest area of space and had the largest number of colonies.

Minbari warriors hurried towards the area of the hull, where the dropship was about to get through the hull. They were sure that the humans would need time to get through the hull armor of the ship as the crystalline matrix was known to be very resistant to energy weapons or any laser cutter.

They were wrong. Shielded by special alloys, the docking ring of the drop ship was equipped with a large ring that was a giant shaped charge. As it detonated it forced a metal inlay inside the charge to become a stream of superheated liquid that forced its way through the crystalline hull, breaking the crystalline matrix appart and reducing it to a shower of crystalline shrapnel.

Without much more warning than a another loud bang three quaters of the assembled warriors were literally ripped apart by the cloud of crystalline shrapnel and reduced to bloody mess in the rooms that lay behind the corridor near the hull. The rest of the warriors just stared in shock at the pitiful remains of the brothers and sisters and the large hole that was large enough for two Nials to fit through.

There was a short silence before another loud clang was heard and the first Terran Marines stormed out of the dropship and into the crippled Sharlin.

The uniforms of the Marines were the result of decades and centuries of scientific research. Flexible smart ceramics protected the wearer from kinetic energy and other energy weapons by transforming into a hard state to dissipate the energy. The ceramics were only able to dissipate certain amounts of energy and failed when the energy was to high. Helmets had integrated sensory systems and laser projectors that placed the information directly onto the soldiers retina. Other memory materials allowed the wearer to be protected in space, while the uniform itself wouldn't have looked out of place in the battlefields of the first decade of the 21th century.

Gauss assault rifles opened fire and the rests of the Minbari forces were put out of action before they could even react.

This scene repeated itself all over the crippled Minbari fleet over Jericho and by the end of the day most of vessels were in Terran hands. The crews of three Tinashis and one Sharlin had managed to activate the self destruction and blown them up in a spectacular way, while the other ships had been damaged further by the battles between Marines and Minbari warriors. Aside from six Marine Platoons in the destroyed Minbari ships, the boarding action had killed fifty Marines.

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Terran Union President Mark Ryan sat on the round table of the situation room about a kilometer below the White House. He was in his second election period and like his first, he had won the elections with a very high majority of 71 percent. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he was a full wolf-morph, but he doubted it.

He looked around and into the faces of the Joint Chiefs and General Dawson, who was still with _Norfolk_ and only present with modern holographic technologies. The First Battle of Jericho had happened two weeks ago and the Minbari had tried to take the system twice more, before they went directly to Leonus and Ross, destroying the Leonus colony completely, while Ross was protected by several units of Battle Fleet, like most systems now.

But Battle Fleet had only so many ships. After the Dilgar War, the Union had decommissioned a good portion of the fleet, while only few new ships had entered service.

"Due to all respect, sir," General Miller of Battle Fleet said," I still think, we should pull the vessels of Patrol Fleet into active duty in Battle Fleet."

"Are you nuts, Miller?" General Petterson of Patrol Fleet said and tied to kill Miller with a hard glare," Our ships were modern during the Dilgar War. Like Frontier Defese. You from Battle Fleet hogged all the new ships. And now you want ours as well?"

"Gentlemen," Ryan said and held his hands up," We can't afford a fight between any of the fleets. I need you to cooperate."

The two Generals glared at each other, but remained silent. Ryan sighed. It was bad enough that the three services of the Navy had to fight between themselves, but now was not the time to intensify it.

He looked at Dawson, who had remained silent.

"Is there anything you can tell us, General Dawson?" he asked, not really thinking that he would get an answer, as he hadn't gotten an answer the last few times Dawson had taken part in these meetings.

"As a matter of fact, Mr. President," Dawson said," I have some news."

Ryan's eyebrow raised and his ears perked.

"Our engineers on _Norfolk_ and _Vladivostok_ have taken a few looks at the Minbari ships we have here. We were finally able to locate an intact computer core. Einstein and Korolew are currently trying to decrypt the information in them."

"How long will it be until we have the informations?"

"Einstein isn't sure. It could be a few days until we are able to decrypt the data completely."

Ryan nodded. That were good news.

"What about the Stealth systems?"

"Negative, Sir. We have questioned some of the Minbari, but they refuse to tell us anything. And Amnesty won't like it if we break the Geneva Convention."

Ryan nodded again.

"How about burning through the Stealth," another General asked," Can't we simply mount the sensory equipment of a Battle Plate into a battleship?"

Dawson chuckled a bit. Most of the Generals didn't really know much about Battle Plates as they were a fleet on their own, detached from Patrol Fleet, Battle Fleet and Frontier Defense.

"I think that will be a problem, General," he finally said," The active sensory systems of a Battle Plate are twice the volume of an Alabama class battleship. The passive systems are of the same size, not to mention the reactors needed to power the equipment."

There was a pause.

"But Einstein noticed something during the battles. It seems that the Minbari are using singularities in their reactors, small black holes. When they move through space they produce minor gravity waves. And the sensors used to find a string for the String Drive are able to measure these waves. It could be possible that we use those sensors to detect the Minbari. But even than we are not fully able to say where they are, as the gravity sensors are not build for something like that."

"But it would be a way to see them without a Battle Plate," Ryan said.

"Possible, sir. But we haven't tried it yet."

Ryan nodded.

"Good," he sayed and looked at the Generals," Now we talk about 'Operation Midway'."


	7. Chapter 7

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Six

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The _Topaz_ flew through the outer reaches of the Norsa system, her powerful passive sensors listening into the inner system.

The _Topaz_ was a strange sight to look upon and most prying eyes would confuse it with a small irregular asteroid that passed passed through a system in a hyperbolic course, or was part of an asteroid belt. No one would think that it was a space ship, let alone a ship specially build for recon missions.

Truth be told, the _Topaz_ used to be an asteroid orbiting Sol in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. If scanned by common systems, special materials protected the inner artificial core and make it look like a rather common iron-nickel asteroid. The same materials held most EM emissions inside the already very economical design. But even if the _Topaz_ was found out, she would be able to get away using her String Drive and than get into Jump Space with her Jump Drive.

But she did what she was designed to do, listen to the EM and Tachyon emissions of the target system while cruising through at a high pace that was possible for hyperbolic asteroids, her course bringing it up to 10 million kilometers close to the only colonized planet of the system, colonized by a client race of the Minbari, who seemed to play protectors for this race, just like they did with six other planets and two other races, at least according to the computer cores salvaged from the Minbari ships in the Jericho system.

And the so called Minbari Protectorate was a target for the Terran Union.

Two days after the _Topaz_ had entered the system, she had seen enough and since no Minbari ship was looking at the unsuspicious asteroid and is passed inside the sensory shadow of the next planet, she activated her String Drive and left the system, valuable information about Minbari strength in her computer core.

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The Vega system was bursting with activity, Ships entered the system, unloading materials and some of them integrating into the formations of Battle Fleet ships above the moon of Vega II, a planet colonized only 15 years ago and with 2 million people living on the planet.

Like in the other systems of the Terran Union facing the Minbari Federation, it was about to become a fortress, high numbers of passively stealthed G.O.D. satellites hanging above the planet and its moon, while large bases equipped with large numbers of missile silos and fixed weapon emplacements.

All this equipment that was shipped to Vega and the other systems facing the Minbari Federation came from the large industrial quadrangle made up by Sol and the eldest Terran colonies, now states, of Proxima, Cooke and Wolf. Orbital complexes there had increased their output of military hardware since the first attack on Delphi two month ago.

But they didn't only build new hardware, the drydocks of the four systems also took old ships from the Dilgar War out of storage and brought them into service to boost the numbers of ships that could be actively used against the Minbari. Most of them specially pulled out of storage for the first missions of 'Operation Midway', while more modern vessels were held back for later engagements.

Alone in Vega there were more than one thousand vessels of various old classes pushed into service in the last four weeks, with only a hundred of newer vessels from the time after the Dilgar War. And the numbers grew with each hour.

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Like Vega the Terran Union was busy in Delphi. Two month after the first attack of the Minbari, the Union was back in the system. Battle Fleet Command had thought that the Minbari would still be in the system, but when a fleet of Battle Fleet vessels entered the system, no Minbari was seen. It was as if the Minbari weren't interested in the system itself.

The Marines send down to the planet had been able to find survivors of the battle, about two thousand people of formerly a quarter million. Battle Fleet had offered them to get them of the planet, but they had refused, burying their families and friends and tried to rebuild their homes.

The courage of the survivors became a symbol in this war.

Like in Vega, a large fleet assembled in orbit around the planet, a good thousand old vessels pulled from storage and only a hundred modern ships, ready for their part of 'Operation Midway'.

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General Dawson stood in the Command Center of _Norfolk_, looking at the screen at the small point of light in the center of the screen. Eudo, a sun only a lightday distant to the Battle Plate and its fleet.

"Everything is ready, General," Einstein said and put his arms behind his holographic body," All bomber and fighter squadrons are in formation. The fleets also signal ready signals."

Dawson continued to look at the screen and Eudo. About twenty million sentient beings were living on the only colonized planet, the Minbari only now and then helping them, calling it protecting. Based on the data from the computer cores they found in Jericho, the three races in the Minbari Protectorate were old battle companions in a big war a millenium ago.

Back than the Minbari and other races had fought an enemy that wasn't mentioned in the computer cores and several other races perished in the fights, some of them leaving ruins on some planets in the Terran Union.

The Minbari thought that they helped the races survive, but it wasn't like the Union had helped the Dilgar. The three races could be compared with the people living in a military dictatorship from the twentieth century, the best comparison being Cuba, at least according to one of the Cuban crewmen.

'Operation Midway' targeted this Minbari Protectorate. It was a First Strike of the Terran Union into Minbari controlled space and a liberation of the three races from their Minbari overlords.

Dawson finally nodded.

"Good. Stage One of 'Operation Midaway' is a go."

With that the largest spaceborne operation started as tachyon impulses speed through space to the other fleets outside of Norsa, Eudo, Moga and Tychola as the vessels activated their String drives and speed into the inner systems of the suns.


	8. Chapter 8

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Seven

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It was silent in the Eudo system. Some small time traffic went from the planet to the Jump Gate, while Sharlins and Tinashis patrolled the system or at least the interesting parts of the system. The only down part of the traffic was the fact that it only involved Minbari vessels crewed by Minbari, since common Minbari politics thought that the old 'friends' couldn't been bothered with space travel and should live like an under age in the Terran Union with not much right and having to do what the 'parents' said.

But this silence was broken as ten squadrons of heavy bombers dropped from their String Drive runs just short of the atmosphere and the two moons of the planet. Two Squadrons dove into the atmosphere, homing in onto the Minbari garrison, while the bombers prepared to take out the military installations of the two moons and the stations orbiting the planet.

Bombs were dropped and the heavy conventional explosives destroyed a good portion of the fixed defenses of the system. Before the crews of the Minbari ships could react the heavy bombers had already disappeared back in to String Drive, speeding back to Norfolk.

The chaos lasted ten minutes, Minbari Aylts trying to find out just what had happened, as a large Terran fleet, consisting of mostly old vessels of the Dilgar War and only a few modern units, dropped back to sublight speeds.

The numbers of Minbari vessels in the system was low and the Terran fleet destroyed about thirty Minbari war ships within twenty minutes and only a few losses, twenty frigates and tour cruisers. Only two Sharlins were allowed to leave the system damaged to tell their superiors.

The same happened in three other Minbari controlled systems.

The first mission of 'Operation Midway' was a success.

--------------------------------------------------------

"They did what?"

Londo Molari, Centauri ambassador to the Terran Union, stared at his aide, a goblet filled with fine French wine slipped from his hand and fell to the ground.

The aide didn't say anything and just turned to a screen hidden between some Terran artwork. The screen came to live and started to show CNN.

"... success of the first attacks of Union forces against the Minbari," the woman on the screen said," Battle Fleet Command informed us that four massive fleets were moved into Minbari controlled space and secured the systems of Eudo, Norsa, Moga and Tychola. These systems belong to an entity calloed Minbari Protectorate, three old races that are only second class citizens to the Minbari Federation."

Molari stared at the screen and stumbled back, falling heavily into a couch.

"Battle Fleet Command declared that there were no casualties in the civil populations of the four systems as the attacks were only directed against military installations on planets, moon and in orbit around the colonized planets. These declarations started several protests in front of the Pentagon, demanding the bombardment of civil installations as revenge of the destruction of five Union colonies."

The news anchor continued to read the news and the reactions of these first attacks against Minbari controlled space and Molari continued to stare at the screen.

"These humans are insane," he muttered.

The Centauri themselves where the second most powerful race in Known Space and not even they dared to openly attack the Minbari, fearing their reactions. But the humans didn't only attack the Minbari, they also won the engagements.

"In other news, the CIA again opened several tragic files about the Dilgar War thirty years ago. Following the decryption of several salvaged Minbari computer cores, leading to several pointers that Warmaster Jha'dur of the former Dilgar Empire has been protected by the Minbari for the last thirty years following the defeat of the Dilgar."

Molari continued to stare at the screen, while his aide choked.

"During the Dilgar war trials, Warmaster Jha'dur had been sentenced to death in absence, due to serve crimes against sentient rights and genocide using banned biological weapons."

"Oh gods," Molari muttered and went white as a sheet.

--------------------------------------------------------

"Do you really think that is was a good move to let the public know about Warleader Jha'dur?"

The man in question just leaned back in his chair, smirking a little.

"Yes, it is," he said and looked at his companion," It will help us form the public opinion to this war. There are many people who want to end this war, the news concerning the worst warcriminal in history since Dr. Mengele will get a good portion of the public pro-war. And it will mark the Minbari as more dangerous if the public thinks that they are in league with her, thinking that she is developing biologic weapons against us."

"But she isn't. She is some sort of prisoner of the Minbari."

"The public doesn't know. And we won't tell them."

There was a silence between the two men.

"And if we are lucky, the League and the Narn will enter the war based on the same thoughts."

The other man swallowed as the Director of the CIA suddenly started to laugh.

"All will come together quite nicely and my associates will be pleased."

For a moment the other man thought that he saw a few shadows appearing out o nowhere.


	9. Chapter 9

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Eight

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Aylt Neroon was still shaken from the news they had gotten four days ago. First they lost contact to four worlds in the Minbari Protectorate and now the Angla'shok scouts had reported back.

The humans really had dared to attack Minbari controlled space. The attacks on Jericho and Leonis had been annihilated by the humans, but that was because the humans had the numerical advantage. It couldn't be advanced technologies. The humans were in space for just about a century, give or take a decade.

Neroon closed his eyes for a moment before looking at the swirls of jumpspace. How had they been able to take four systems of the Protectorate. And they had done so with the same classes of space ships they had used thirty years ago when they fought against the Dilgar.

But now they were about to learn the error of attacking the Minbari Federation as a whole.

Neroon turned around as his ship speed towards the staging area for the counterattack at Eshar.

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"I can't believe this," Captain Sinclair said and looked up from his copy of the New York Times, printed by the systems of the _Nimitz_," The Minbari have Jha'dur?"

Next to him Lieutenant Masako Saotome frowned and shook her head.

"Well. It certainly explains why Mossad wasn't able to find her."

"True," Sinclair said and put his newpaper away to look at the Japanese catgirl that happened to be hi co-pilot," Anything special, that you came here."

Masako leveled a glare at him and gave him a PDA.

"Just the last checks of the _Excalibur_. Everything is fine and we are ready to go."

"We just need the order," Sinclair said and nodded.

The _Excalibur_ was one of the Enola Gay class strategical bombers that would be part of 'Operation Doolittle'. The fifty meter long bomber was currently docked with the _Nimitz_, filled with several FAE bombs, specially designed for the oxygen atmosphere of Minbar, where the Excalibur would bombard a few industrial areas. Very nice of the inbari to load their computer cores with complete data of their industrial and military installations.

Sinclair skimmed over the PDA. The AEGIS system for the defense was okay, the connection to the six point defense plasma canons were tested and worked. The secondary Plasma Bomb Launchers were filled to the brim with deuterium for the plasma and the reactors worked. The plasma powered scramjet engines for atmospheric flight were prepared and would propel the Excalibur through the atmosphere of Minbar, since the gravimetric drive of the bomber didn't work that deep inside the gravity well of a planet.

The Plasma Bomb Launchers were a last minute addition to the layout of the bombers when they were pulled out to take part on 'Operation Doolittle'. The created a high energy fusion plasma and then a special forcefield surrounded them when they were launched. The forcefield held the plasma stable for about ten second until they had used their energy and collapsed, resulting in a multiple dozen ton detonation at the target. Next to FAE bombs they were the strongest non nuclear weapons ever developed.

"Good," he finally said," Get the others together, we go through the mission in about ten minutes."

"Again?" Masako's ears dropped.

"Hey, we could get a go for the mission any minute."

The catgirl pouted as she left Sinclair's cabin and Sinclair couldn't help but shake his head with a smile. He really liked to work with cats.

--------------------------------------------------------

General Dawson nodded to himself as he looked at the holographic display in front of him. The first part of 'Operation Midway' was finished. Battle Fleet had successfully attacked in invaded the Minbari Protectorate. All seven systems were now under Union control with a minimum of civilian casualties.

The Minbari fleet on the other hand had lost about a hundred fifty ships of all classes, while Battle Fleet had lost three hundred forty ships they had pulled from storage, about twenty modern ships and about a thousand fighters and bombers. Mostly because the Minbari had learned a little as Battle Fleet had attacked Iklath, Zendamor and Tir.

Forward scouts of the ONI were currently outside of the three Minbari systems, observing fleet movements.

Now the Minbari just had to fall for the bait the Union had planned for them, Zendamor. Battle Fleet units were low in inner system, which had commonly the most value in attacks and defense of systems. Only about fifty ships were visible there, the rest had pulled out by using Jump Drive and Gates, only to drop out of Jump Space only a few light hours behind the last planet, distant enough to hide from sight of any Minbari scout that would come.

To be an especially juicy target for the Minbari, a Willsberg class dreadnaught, one of about ten build, was brightly visible. The three kilometer long ship had shown its value during the Dilgar War, but in the end they had been deemed too cost intensive. Unlike the Battle Plates, they were only build as dedicated warships and packed quite a punch.

But even a modern battleship of half its size was about as powerful as this thirty year old vessel. But it was still a very juicy target for the Minbari and a perfect bait.

The plan was that the Minbari would target this system, the scientific satellites in the system would get their scans before they left Jump Space, destroy some of the only computer controlled old ships and eventually win. Than the about one and a half thousand hidden vessels would come in guns blazing.

And while the Minbari would get their asses kicked they would be shown just how valuable they were, when 'Operation Doolittle' was a go.

Dawson allowed himself a grin. The Union may have started this war because of a computer bug, but the Minbari had reacted with genocide and the Union would end this was. One way or the other.


	10. Chapter 10

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Nine

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Neroon nodded to himself as he looked at the swirls of jump space again. Now the assembled fleet was on its way towards the Zendamor system, ready to show the humans their place in the universe.

It seemed that the humans had over extended themselves. They had only stationed a few old battle ships in the system. Maybe mostly because the system was only minor colony and not so important.

One of the ships was a special case. A big battle ships, longer than even the largest Minbari ship. They had taken on the largest Dilgar ship all by themselves during the Dilgar war and won. It would be a really interesting battle against such a ship.

The humans couldn't hope to win this battle. Only their large numbers had helped them during the earlier battles, but now they would be up against nearly four hundred Minbari battle ships, a hundred of them Sharlins. It was the largest assembled fleet since the Great War a millennium ago.

And after that, the humans would pay for the attack on the Gray Council and the Minbari Protectorate.

--------------------------------------------------------

Dawson nodded to him self. Like so often in the last weeks he stood in the Tactical Command Center of _Norfolk_ and looked at one of the many holographic screens.

Just a few hours ago, the _Mata_ _Hari_, one of the recon ships of the ONI had informed the fleet that the Minbari were on their way and their course vectors pointed at Zendamor.

The Minbari were falling for the trap. But at the same time, they had pulled the largest fleet together this war had seen from the side of the Minbari. About four hundred vessels, a quarter of them Sharlins.

He had given Yellow Alert throughout the fleet, preparing for the battle that would come in the next few hours.

If everything worked according to plan, the Minbari would get the shock of their lives. And hopefully sue for peace.

Dawson shook his head clear. He shouldn't think about that already. The battle was still hours away and there were so much that could go wrong. No plan survives initial contact with the enemy.

--------------------------------------------------------

Terran Union President Mark Ryan looked at his Chief of Staff. At the moment his face looked like that of a kicked puppy.

"Are you really sure?"

Sergey Kurjakov nodded.

"Yes, Mr. President."

Ryan turned around and started out into the sky of Washington D.C.

"Foreign influence? What sort of foreign influence?"

"Mossad still works that out, but from what we can tell, he has been under this influence since he returned from that flight from Za'ha'dum. But Jason Mordan isn't the only one. Nearly everyone from that flight seems to be under the same influence. And some of them are in positions similar to Mordan."

Ryan growled. How could the Director of the CIA be under foreign influence for years without anyone suspecting it. He turned back around and used his computer to look up the names of the people who had been on that flight to Za'ha'dum, an operation of the Smithsonian Institute and a few other institutes with a single CIA agent, Mordan, who had been part of the flight out of curiosity and because his father had asked him to.

His eyes widened in shock. Two senators, four representatives and the CO's of several mayor firm were under the people who had been to Za'ha'dum. If everything was prooved and Mossad returned with hard evidence, this would be a scandal larger than the 'Solakov Scandal' four years ago, which had completely ruined the Baseball Leagues. Not even today anyone would go to even a minor baseball game.

"Oh my god..."

--------------------------------------------------------

Sinclair leaned back and sighed. For the last few hours he and his crew of four were sitting in the _Exaclibur_, waiting for the Go signal. He looked over to Masako who flicked her ears in boredom.

Sinclair smiled a bit as he looked at he before his look went to the back of the cockpit to the bomb specialist. Lar'tal was a female Dilgar and Sinclair found it a little bit funny that she was here, doing the same job that had destroyed Dilgar installations during the last war. At the moment, she did the last checks of her systems.

The last member of the crew was Marco Hernandez, a Latino from Proxima, the gunner and responsible for the AEGIS system. The only thing that marked him as a mutant was the fact that his eyes were slitted. Sinclair looked at the book Marco was reading and raised an eyebrow seeing the title.

"'2001'? Aren't we in the 23rd century already?"

Marco glared at Sinclair and Masako snickered a bit.

"Got a problem with my choice, cap?"

"Not really. I read it myself, in High School for a project."

Marco shook his head and at the same time the PA system of the bomber awoke to life.

"'Operation Doolittle' is a Go. Zendamor is under attack of Minbari forces."

Sinclair clapped his hands.

"Okay, people. Lets get to work. And deliver our packages. All at the right place and at the right time. Like UPS does."


	11. Chapter 11

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Ten

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_Lexington_ was one of the ten vessels of the 23rd Cruiser Task Force. The second of up to date six Ticonderoga class Fast Attack Cruisers. She was a brand new ship, having left dock three month ago, before going through trials and only now getting into her first battle.

She was a move away from the classic blocky design implemented by the Terran Nave and a move towards a sleek flat design, that presented only a small slim silhouette from front, aft and the sides, while having a large silhouette from ventral and dorsal sides. With her seven hundred meter length she wasn't longer than any other cruiser, but she packed quite a few new technologies making her more than a match for older cruisers, even with a lower number of weapons.

She was also the fastest cruiser ever build, since two fifth of her volume were taken by fusion reactors with Zero Point Backup Taps, a large gravimetric drive that allowed her to move as fast and nimble as a frigate, a String Drive that was more powerful than any other of her class and allowing higher speeds on a string, and had a newly designed Jump Point Projector making her one of the few ships of her size class able to enter hyperspace on her own.

As she dropped from her String, together with the other nine ships of the 23rd CTF and right on top of a Minbari Task Force that moved closer to the planet of Zendamor.

"I got twenty hard targeting solutions," the tactical officer said and smiled," This Interferometric Software for the gravimetric sensors works great."

Major John Sheridan, commander of _Lexington_, nodded and smiled a grin that would have send most people packing if they didn't know him, since the Cougar-morph was a nice guy to be around outside of battle.

He wasn't really surprised that it worked, using the gravimetric sensors of the String Drive to look out for the quantum singularities used by the Minbari in their reactors. The data of the sensors was send to the other ships over the TacNet of the Task Force and every ship worked on the readout of the Software by itself. The only drawback of the system was the fact that it only worked for a certain distance and a certain number of targets.

"All ships fire at will," he said and his eyes locked on one of the holographic projections in the Command Center.

The holo showed a representation of _Lexington_, where her three dorsal and three ventral turrets turned get into the right position for their targeting solutions. Green lights lit up on the ventral hull as Harpoon V anti cap ship missiles left their launch positions, each of them carrying a 200 ton non nuclear fusion warhead.

His glance turned towards another hologram, this one showing one of the Tinashis his TF was targeting. The dorsal turrets fired, dual graser beams of three turrets lancing out towards the crystalline hull of the Tinashi.

The beams slammed into the forwards dorsal hull, some of their energy dissipating as heat as the crystalline material of the armor started to heat up and than to simply vaporise, ripping a large hole into the forward hull, opening the decks behind to hard vacuum. The hull breach was than used by the cybernetic intelligence of three Harpoons who slammed into the ship. With a spectacular explosion the frontal half of the Tinashi ceased to be with the aft half starting to spin in space, smalling into another Tinashi and breaking off one of its drive fins.

"Fire solution for MAC One and Two."

Sheridan's grin intensified as he thought about the most powerful weapon ever integrated into the hull of a Fast Attack Cruiser.

"Fire."

Deep within the hull of _Lexington_ shutters closed and energy from capacitator banks started to flow into two pairs of long rails, each of them surrounded by a conducting force field. Two fitfy ton ten meter diameter disks of conductive material slid between the rails, closing the circuit and letting high currents flow through the rails and the disk. The disks started to slide along the 500 meter long rails and left the MACs as 20 PSL.

The only thing Sheridan saw were twin explosions of light as the disks from the MACs impacted into the broadside hull of a Tinashi, ripping large holes into the armor and half of the ship.

Suddenly the ship shook as the Minbari got over their shock and started to fire.

"We lost _Houston_ and _Miami_."

Sheridan cursed as the targeting systems suddenly dropped in effectivity as the Task Force lost two vessels at once and the Interferometric Software lost data.

Beams of energy impacted into the ship, passing a dual defensive layer of DefNet and EWeb fields, each of them managing to dissipate some of the beams energy, but not all.

"Hull Breach, Forward Dorsal Hull, Decks four to six. Force fields in place. String Drive recallibrating."

"Break of," Sheridan said and _Lexington_ started to turn about.

A pair of Sharlins started to home in of the remaining eight ships of the 23rd CTF, firing at them.

"We lost _Boston_ and _Marakesh_."

Sheridan cursed again. He knew something like this would happen when he had gotten orders to drop deep into the Minbari formations with 43rd CTF and 2nd DTF, while the other ships came from all other sides.

Suddenly the screen lit up as one of the Sharins blew up in a spectacular display of energy. Sheridan looked over to the tactical display and couldn't help but stare for a moment.

"She's still fighting?" he muttered," That is one hell on an AI."

On the display _Erwin_ _Rommel_, the Willsberg class dreadnaught, dove into the fight from above, two of her gravimetric engines glowing in a light that showed that they had started to burn with a slow atomic fire, gas leaking from numerous hull breaches, her last remaining masers and gauss guns blazing at the surviving Sharlin.

"She's going to ram the Sharlin," the tactical officer called out and Sheridan couldn't help but stare at the display as the wedge shaped dreadnought smalled into the Sharin like an oversized arrow head.

_Rommel_ pierced through the whole Sharlin, ripping away crystalline armor and other parts of the Minbari vessel, continuing to fire even as she left the holed vessels behind.

"Those ships can take some punishment," someone on the bridge said and Sheridan just nodded as _Rommel_ took on the next Sharlin coming from underneath _Lexington_, her remaining guns still blazing.

The last they saw of _Rommel_ was a bright explosion as she rammed the Sharlin, destroying both the Minbari ship and the once proud deadnought.

"At least she went in a blaze of glory," a heavily German accented voice suddenly said and heads whiped around to look at a holographic image of a man in a WWII Afrika Korps uniform.

"Erwin Rommel at your service."

With that Lexington gained its very own AI.


	12. Chapter 12

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Eleven

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It was the third hour into the battle of Zendamor and _Lexington_ had been separated from the last vessels of her Task Force. She was far away from the real battle, trying to get away from a huge Sharlin.

The rest of the Battle Line had spread over the entire gravity well of Zendamor and the Minbari had been reduced to just a few dozen ships, while the Terran Fleet had lost nearly six hundred ship. Even with the tactical advantage of the String Drive and the new Software that allowed to get interferometric data from several gravitational sensors, the Terran fleet had several tactical disadvantages. If a ship was hit, antennas and phalanxes of projectors were burned from the hull, and the String Drive needed to be recalibrated to work with the new layout of projectors nearly constantly. TacNet was jammed by the Minbari and the interferometric software lost data and made it a problem to target the Minbari at all.

"Hull Breach aft, Decks One to Four. We lost a third of MAC Twos capacitators."

Sheridan cursed. He needed to get away from that Sharlin. He glanced over to Rommel, the AI of the now destroyed dreadnought _Rommel_. Sheridan knew that all Terran ships had the capability to work with an AI, but only few ships had one and even now Rommel was busy with recompiling parts of his code to work with the computer core of _Lexington_.

Three of the graser turrets had been put out of actions and only four grasers of the remaining turrets were still in action, with the sole ventral turret being welded in to its position pointing port. The missile batteries were empty, having been sped during the first hour of the battle. And the MACs were of no use as they were fixed forward. That left Lexington with only two working grasers which were constantly firing at the general direction of the _Black_ _Star,_ as Minbari IFF had named the large Sharlin behind _Lexington_.

Only now and than _Lexington_ was getting in one or two hits and those were only strafing shots at best. He needed to take it out and fast, before the _Black_ _Star_ took them out.

Suddenly an idea stuck him.

"I got helm and tactical," he said firmly as he started to reconfigure his holographic console.

"I hope you know what you do, skipper," the tac officer, still bleeding from a flesh wound on his arm where he had been hit by a plastic shrapnel from an exploding shutter.

"I hope so too," Sheridan gave back and pressed a few buttons, reloading the MACs and charging the capacitators.

Another hit rocked _Lexington_ and again Sheridan was glad that the combined DefNet/EWeb fields were spreading the actual damage of the Minbaris energy weapons to a much higher surface of the armored hull.

"They are getting more shots in," Rommel said with a strangely calm voice," I would say they need only five or six shots until they hit the reactors."

Sheridan ignored the new AI of his ship as good as he could and waited.

As the next hit shook the ship, he deactivated the gravimetric drives, but now without bringing Lexington into a slow spin. From the outside it would have to look as if the hit had taken out the drive itself.

"What are you doing?" someone screamed and Sheridan stared at the screen in front of him, showing the fuzzy optical image of the _Black_ _Star_.

Lexington spun around slowly, the Sharlin closing in on the purposely crippled Fast Attack Cruiser for a fast and effective kill.

"Now," Sheridan said as his instincts screamed at him and pressed the fire button of the MACs.

The two MACs activated and flung their payloads towards the large Sharlin. The 50 ton discus from MAC One had its full speed, while MAC Two only was able to accelerate her projectile to 13 PSL.

The first MAC round impacted into the frontal armor of the _Black_ _Star_, the crystalline armor unable to take the huge amounts of kinetic energy released by the 50 ton projectile going at 20 PSL. More than half of the frontal armor was turned into crystalline shrapnel racing through half of the ship, while the rests of the MAC round forced its way through the rest of the Sharlin, destroying one fusion reactor and another good portion of the aft armor, before continuing to move towards interstellar space at now only about 4 PSL.

The second MAC round followed only a few hundredth seconds later, racing through the open frontal armor deep into the innards of the Sharlin and right into the Singularity reactor of the large vessel, destroying the dampening fields protecting the 2000 ton singularity inside the reactor from everything.

As the dampening fields failed, nature claimed the singularity and she disappeared in a flash of Hawking Radiation equal to the detonation of a 20 GT thermonuclear bomb, vaporizing the rest of the once proud Minbari vessel.

_Lexington_ was still near to the detonation and the Hawking Radiation flashed over her, melting and vaporizing a few meters of her carbonite armor and shortening her as the fifty meter thick frontal armor lost the first forty meter.

Sheridan and the rest of the crew were shaken as the wave of energy washed around the flat and once aerodynamic ship.

"Damage and casualty reports," Sheridan ordered, circles dancing in front of his eyes from the sudden flash of bright light before the camera melted away," Status of the String Drive."

"String Drive operational," he heard the voice of Rommel," But we will have a hard time navigating. Only the rear sensors are still online."

Sheridan nodded and pressed his eyes shut trying to tone down the white circles in his field of sight.

"Take helm, Rommel," he finally said," And get us to _Norfolk_ ASAP."

"Yes, sir."


	13. Chapter 13

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Twelve

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"Reentry of Normal Space in five..."

Jeffrey Sinclair breathed in as he head the voice of Masako, his eyes concentrating on the large cockpit windows of _Excalibur_.

"Four..."

Flying with the String Drive was strange. Even at FTL velocities of more than fifty times the speed of light it was possible to see everything going on STL. But it was strange to see a gas giant grow in seconds and than wizz by the window.

"Three..."

His eyes went over the displays for a moment as Excalibur slowed down for leaving the string she was currently using for FTL travel. Everything was okay. But Sinclair knew that it wouldn't last very long.

"Two..."

Only a few more seconds and they would be doing the job they were trained to do. But there was something nagging in the back of his mind.

"One..."

Were his orders the right thing to do? Should they really be doing this?

"Now."

His thoughts were blown away from his mind as _Excalibur_ dropped from her string, the other bombers in formation not even a hundred kilometers over the surface of Minbari, having dropped from FTL down to orbital speeds o only four kilometers per second. He could see small plasma fingers dancing across the surface of the heavy bomber.

"All clear for atmospheric entry."

He glanced over to Masako.

"Are we on course?"

"One hundred percent."

Sinclair nodded and looked back at the other two crew members.

"Lar'tal?"

The Dilgar woman nodded.

"Armed and ready."

"Marco?"

"Already got several bogies on the screen. Looks like shuttles and Nials on patrol or something."

"Did they see us?"

"I got no idea."

Sinclair nodded and pushed the flightstick forward, tilting the large B2 shaped bomber forward towards the atmosphere. With trained ease his fingers danced across the controls, killing speed with the gravimetrical drives as long as he was able to do so. The HUD changed slightly, showing him the best course for his part of the bombing run as the other bombers broke away from _Excalibur_.

As the bomber had dropped down to a hight of fifty kilometers the gravimetrical drives stuttered as they weren't able to work against the gravity of the planet below anymore and the computer switched them off. There was a loud bang ringing through the hull of the bomber as the dual scramjets opened up and the thin high atmosphere streamed through them and another as plasma from the reactors was injected into them, making space for a deep rumble.

"Scramjets active. Everything looks good."

The bomber screamed through the air of Minbari, dropping further in hight, while its speed stabilized at Mach six.

"We are ten kilometers away from Nav Point One," Sinclair said after a while," Open the bomb bay."

Lar'tal nodded and the twin bomb bays of _Excalibur_ opened, forcefields preventing airdrag of the two large openings. The right bomb bay was filled with the Plasma Bomb Launchers, able to drop seven forcefield bottles filled with plasma at the same time, two times before needing to recharge until they hit the next Nav Point. The left was filled with six thermobaric FAE bombs, the strongest non-nuclear bombs.

Lar'tal looked at her displays, fingers ready to press the trigger for the bombs.

"Three... Two... One... DROP!"

With that fourteen plasma bottles screamed towards thew surface, while a much slower FAE follwed, being slowed down to sub-sonic speeds by a chute.

_Excalibur_ was long since on her way towards the next Nav Point as the plasma botles slammed into the bome like structures of a large Wind Swords training facility, the force field bottles collapsing and bathing the surrounding area in sunhot plasma.

The FAE bomb on the other side dropped slowly, needing thirty seconds to reach the optimal high to release dust like solid propane. The cold propane sublimated in the hot atmosphere of Minbar and as the FAE reached the surface on an open air training area with several hundred young Minbari warriors, staring at the still blooming plasma detonations about a kilometer distant, he air itself was explosive. The bomb released the last of its dust like propane and ignited.

More than two hundred meters around the impact of the bomb was going up in a growing fireball. The first shockwave of the detonation destroyed about a hundred meter more, while the second of air streaming back in to the vacuum created by the detonation reduced large parts of the training facility to nothing more than burning rubble.

"Three... Two... One... DROP!"

The second drop destroyed another facility of the Wind Swords, this time a complex housing the few elders living on the planet itself. Four more targets followed , destroying two more facilities of the Wind Swords, while one destroyed a fusion reactor and the last a production facility for parts needed for Nials.

'Operation Doolittle' was a full success, the Minbari never even reacting to the attack of the bombers before they had already left the planets atmosphere and got away by using their String Drives.

Sinclair could only stare at the display showing the rapidly shrinking planet of Minbari, part of him asking if it had been the right thing.


	14. Chapter 14

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Thirteen

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"The humans have gone to far."

The other six members of the Gray Council nodded. Delen and Dukhat were not with them, as Dukhat was still in a coma, while Delen was still in rehabilitation, since her legs had been broken in multiple places, while the other members of the Gray Council only suffered broken arms and other minor damages to their bodies.

To say that the three Warrior Satais and the three Worker Satais were furious, was an understatement. The single Religious Satai on the other side was nervous as hell, as he had problem to guess what Delen or Dukhat would mean with this.

"The humans have dared to attack out home world," the Warrior Satai continued," That is too much. First they attack us, than they invade the Protectorate, now they have attacked Minbar. We need to deal with them once and for all. We have let them get away with their ways for too long. They cannot be allowed to live any longer."

The Religious Satai flinched, while most of what the Warrior had said was true, the rest of it spoke of hurt pride. On both the Warriors and the Workers. Both of them had lost people during the course of the war. But while the Workers Caste was mostly neutral during all this, the Warriors where hurt the most. They had anticipated a fast victory over the humans and the Terran Union. The attack of the humans on Minbar itself had been the worst thing that could have happened.

But the Satai knew that the humans had only attacked factories and installations of the Warrior Caste. No one knew how the humans had been able to get informations about the places they attacked, and he had the feeling that it would remain that way.

"We must deal with them once and for all."

All the Religious Satai could do was stand there and watch as the other six Satais voted for the plan of the Warriors to attack Earth and destroy the planet.

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President Ryan looked sharply at Samuel Mordan, current head of the CIA. The where alone in the Oval Office, or at least it seemed that way. Ryan's instincts were screaming at him that there were others in the room and he was pretty sure where these others where. But Ryan was still too much Marine to let himself show that he knew of them.

He has summoned Mordan just a few hours after Mossad had given him all the evidence he needed. Only one hour ago, he had notified Mossad to act. Imprison the Senators and Representatives for high treason, while dealing with everyone else who was involved with the Za'ha'dum case, on a permanent basis.

A manila folder slapped onto the large oak desk of the Oval Office and the glare Ryan directed at Mordan intensified.

"What the hell did you think you where doing?" he asked in a very low voice and a low growl in the back of his throat.

Mordan blinked in surprise.

"What?"

Ryan leaned forward a hand closing around a Dessert Eagle strapped to the underside of the oak desk in anticipation of the things to come, while his other hand pointed at the folder.

Mordan took the folder and looked at the contents. As he worked his way through he folder he got pale and Ryan could feel that the invisible others started to move, coming closer to him.

"Your meeting with Jason Koslowski, the CEO of Janus Aerospace. The fact that the _Von_ _Braun_ was refit in one of Janus' drydocks. And that INI found a code fragment that was out of date for decades and wasn't to be found in any other AEGIS computer. A code fragment that caused the AEGIS system of the _Von_ _Braun_ to attack the Minbari."

"How..."

"Mossad is doing very good work," Ryan said and his eyes started to burn holes into Mordan, who suddenly straightened.

"I have no idea what you are talking about."

"Of cause you do," Ryan answered and his instincts started to ring the alarm bells.

The next five seconds went of faster than Mordan could react. Something seemed to solify next to Ryan who reacted with the natural born reflexes of a Wolf-morph, only strengthened by the training of a Marine. His head wasn't where it had been a few milliseconds earlier and a large black claw shattered the back of his armchair.

Ryan pulled the Desser Eagle from its hiding spot and armed it in less than a second, before aiming at the head of the now quite visible creature. The caliber .50 Dessert Eagle barked once and the head of the creature was reduced to a spray of blackish gore. Ryan turned and the other creature was now visible, while Secret Service Agents stormed into the Oval Office guns drawn.

The remaining creature lashed out, managing to slice through the fabric of Ryan expensive Armani suit, but not managing to do more than slice of a few hairs of his fur. The Dessert Eagle barked again and again it found its mark, hitting the creatures head and killing it.

The two creatures hit the ground in heaps, their bodies slowly starting to dissolve on the expansive carpet.

Ryan glared at Mordan, the Dessert Eagle pointed at the surprised mans head.

"Please give me an excuse," Ryan said as his finger tightened around the trigger.

Similar scenes started to play all over the planet and space around Earth. Two shuttles with CEOs of multiplanetary companies blew up, assassins killed several other CEOs.

Two Senators and Representatives where arrested, similar creatures like the ones in the Oval Office dying while Mossad did its job, sending only morphes to deal with the creatures, since they had the right instincts and senses that where able to see the creatures.

In less than two days, news filtered through Washington D.C. And mankind learned of the existence of the Shadows and how they had managed to manipulate the Terran Union to attack the Minbari.


	15. Chapter 15

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter fourteen

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"Home sweet home," Sheridan said as he looked at the holographic projection showing Earth.

_Lexington_ had arrived only a few hours earlier as part of a convoy of more than three hundred damaged ships from the Battle of Zendamor. They were all in various states of damage, but mostly ships that couldn't repaired at _Norfolk_ or the other two Battle Plates in a reasonable time frame. And like a great part of the destroyed ships, the damaged ships where mostly ships pulled from storage and Sheridan knew that a good portion of those would be scrapped and only about a quarter of those who arrived at Sol would be repaired.

Of cause _Lexington_ would be one of the ships that would get repaired, especially since her main computer was now the residence of an AI. AIs weren't very wide spread in use. They were counting as sentient beings and had their own set of sentient rights, so new AIs weren't created very often and in most cases an AI was the result of two AIs exchanging parts of their code, much like the procreation of two organic beings.

Sheridan's glance went over to Erwin Rommel, the resident AI, who had copied itself to _Lexington's_ computer before the old residence, the dreadnought _Erwin_ _Rommel_ had rammed a Sharlin and gone the way of the dodo.

As Sheridan looked at the hologram of Rommel, he had to shake his head. A good portion of the crew were morphes and Rommel had changed his appearance according to his surroundings. Now he was looking like a Fennek-morph wearing the uniform of a WWII Afrika Korps tanker. According to the legends the original of Rommel had been called 'Wüstenfuchs' or 'Dessert Fox', so Rommel only found it right to be a morph while serving with a crew mainly consisting of morphs.

Well, most AIs had their quicks, Sheridan presumed. The AI of the Attack Carrier _Red_ _Baron_ had insisted that at least part of the carrier was painted red.

"We're closing in on the San Diego drydocks," Rommel said," They are taking us in on computer control."

Sheridan nodded his thoughts wandering a little.

The San Diego drydocks were one of about five large dry docks orbiting Earth and one of about seven in the Sol system. More than fifteen more where in the other systems of the industrial retangle, Proxima, Cooke and Wolf.

And San Diego was part of the multiple layers of the Earth Global Defense Network. It originated from about thirty years back when the Dilgar attacked the then defenseless Earth. They managed to destroy several major cities and released a plague that killed about five million people before the CDC could find a cure.

Back than the Pentagon had used huge amounts of money it got to build the EGDN. Five large NEOs had been pulled into several eccentric Earth orbits and used as base for the large Planetary Siege Fortresses. One of them was San Diego an irregular asteroid with a maximum dimension of about thirty kilometers and also home of the San Diego drydocks.

Each PSF was equipped with sensory systems more powerful than those of the Battle Plates and with enough weapons to outfit an entire fleet. They also were bases for fighters and interceptors.

The other layers of the EGDN were large numbers of relative small weapons platforms. They weren't very powerful, but their large number made up for the lacking power. And of cause there was Home Fleet, about three hundred of the most modern ships of the Navy.

Of cause that wasn't counting the number of ships currently in production, during refit or being pulled from storage.

Everyone who dared to attack Earth would get their asses kicked back to their home planets. Of cause most races didn't know the exact size of the EGDN, they mostly presumed only a few hundred defense platforms and Home Fleet, not the fact that there where thousands of platforms and the Siege Fortresses.

Sheridan dared to say that Earth was the best defended planet in Known Space.

"Well, well," Rommel suddenly said and Sheridan looked at him," Looks like the Pentagon finally decided to get of their collective asses."

Sheridan blinked and looked at the holographic projection that had popped up next to him.

It showed a ship that looked much like the flat shape of _Lexington_, but the dimensions where wrong, as was the number of turret mounts.

"Yamato class," Rommel said and smiled," about one and a half kilometers, a hundred meter frontal armor, fifty meters ventral, dorsal, aft and side armor."

Sheridan nodded slightly. Lexington only had half that armor.

"Seven dorsal and ventral turrets armed with dual Plasma cannons and one 450 centimeter gauss cannon. Four MAC guns, three front and one aft. Six VL systems for about two hundred Harpoon V with two reloads each."

Than Rommel smirked.

"I heard that Miamato Musashi was pulled from the dreadnought o his name to be put on the _Yamato_. I hope that class will do honor to her name. She certainly got 25 percent more firepower than a Willsberg."

Sheridan could only nod as he looked at the Yamato and her escort of two Ticonderogas, one Attack Cruiser and five Kurjakow Frigates.

Rommel chuckled.

"They called her _Iowa_."

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Shengol had become the staging area for the counter attack against Earth. The Warrior Caste had pulled everything they could spare from the on going attacks on the Terran fleets in the Protectorate. And most of these vessels pulled together were coming from the large stores of vessels, which had been build since the end of the Shadow War more than a thousand years ago.

Other of those old vessels were strengthening the other attack fleets, but this was still the largest fleet the Warrior Caste had pulled together since the attack on Zendamor, it was even larger. Sharlins and Tinashis filled the space around the single Minbari planet and the sky of it sparkled with the light reflected by their crystalline hulls.

Than the fleet went into formation and opened jump points, illuminating the sky of the planet even in the light of the night.

Earth wouldn't be existing much longer in the mind of the Warriors.


	16. Chapter 16

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Fifteen

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John Sheridan stared at the holo screen in front of him. He knew that he had to get up to date, but this was a little too much.

"Shadows?" he asked out loud and looked around in the mess room.

There was quite an uproar in the crew and Sheridan understood all to good why.

The Terran Union had been manipulated, for about ten years and the attack of the AEGIS system on the Minbari was just the tip of the iceberg. Numerous things had been manipulated by them through humans they had controlled. The head of the CIA only being the most powerful.

Murmurs went through the room as a list with names appeared on the screen and Sheridan cursed. He couldn't believe that he had voted for one of the Senators who where controlled by the Shadows. The other one on the other side, Clark wasn't all that surprising.

The people who where imprisoned and had not been killed by the Shadows after the capture of Morden and Clark, were now on trial for high treason. And Sheridan believed that the jury would judge them guilty. And than they would be dead, since high treason was a crime worth death penalty.

Sheridan would be glad if he could push them through an airlock.

--------------------------------------------------------

"So," Sean McMichaels, the new director of the CIA said as he looked over the list of people.

"This will put a serious dampener to the Agency for a long time," the Vice Director of Operations said," Most of those used to be our best people."

McMichaels nodded. Ten years of Shadow influence on the CIA where taking their toll. A good portion of all CIA offices had been influenced by the Shadows directly and the operatives had to be removed from their posts. Again he was glad that he never had much to do with Mordan directly or he would be on the list.

"Most of them will be put on trial for treason, some of them will only be put on posts on Abbai or other worlds without real interest for us."

McMichaels nodded again.

"What about those excavations Mordan tried to push on Mars and Europa?"

The Vice Director shuffled through his papers than looked up at McMichaels.

"From what we understand at the moment, something is buried there. Something that is related to the Shadows."

McMichaels leaned back. He thought for several moments before looking at the other man.

"We are going to do these excavations. We need intel on the Shadows, but I want AIs on the job. They are less likely to be influenced by whatever is buried there."

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Delenn wasn't happy. She was still hurt and the decision of the Gray Council wasn't something she like either.

An attack directly on Earth. She could understand the decision, but there where already to many deaths on both sides and only the Religious Caste seemed to understand that the Terran attack on Minbar only proved how vulnerable they where in the case of a Shadow attack of the upcoming war.

And Minbar didn't need the deaths of thousands of Warriors in this war. They were all needed in the next Great War. Like the ships.d

She also remembered the last words Dukhat said before the attack of the Terran on the Valen'sha.

"The humans are needed," he had said.

Another thing came to her mind. The Terran could have destroyed the _Valen'sha_ if they had wanted to, but they didn't. Instead they had fled the scene. Something about that didn't add up.

"We need peace," she muttered and grit her teeth.

And she needed to meet with her old friend first and than look for Dukhat.

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Neroon stared out into the swirls of jump space, again. His ship had just barley gotten away from that accursed place of their defeat and that only barley. It had all been a big trap.

The humans had lured the fleet to that cursed system with a few small ships and than sprung the trap by throwing more than a thousand ships at them. They had fought like warriors during the battle, but they still had resorted to a cowardly trap.

His ship had survived the battle unscratched and now he was part of the fleet that had set out for Earth. The planet would be destroyed, completely.

Three hundred Sharlins and nearly a thousand Tanashi would make sure of that. The humans would pay for the defeat and after the destruction of Earth the rest of the Terran Union would be destroyed and the Dilgar eliminated.

None of them should be allowed to exist anymore. They where to dangerous and too chaotic for the forces of light.

Neroon turned around and left the window, heading towards the bridge of the ship.


	17. Chapter 17

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Sixteen

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BGM - Christopher Franke - Pax Terra

It was silent in the Earth Moon gravitational system, shuttles where doing their routes, transporters flashed away with their String Drives towards the inter system colonies, while others went through the L5 Jump Gate towards the extra solar colonies.

In Colorado on the northern American continent was NORAD, it had been shut down during the late 21th century as it wasn't needed back than anymore. But it had been reactivated as part of the Earth Global Defense Network to coordinate the defense affords in the Earth Moon system.

At the moment the people of NORAD were relaxed. Sure the war was going full force, but the Minbari wouldn't dare to attack Earth just now.

But the relaxed atmosphere suddenly changed as alarms went through the large control room of NORAD.

"Minbari pre-jump scans!" one of the technicians jelled out and General Sergej Jurijewich Iwanow literally jumped out of his seat, eyes fixed on the large holographic projection in the center of the room.

"Fuck!" was all he could say as he stared at the sensory returns of hundreds of jump points opening.

Than he stared at the data. The jump points were opening on the other side of the Earth, opposite to the moon and out of range of the lunar defense systems. Three of the Planetary Siege Fortresses where in range of that fleet as where about half of the Defense Platforms and half of Home Fleet. The negative thing was the fact that jump points opened right on top of that part of Home Fleet, the forming singularities shredding the most advanced ships of the Terran Union apart, including one of the new Yamato battle ships.

"SYSTEM ALERT!" he yelled.

--------------------------------------------------------

Three hundred Sharlins, about a thousand Tanashis and several thousand Nials left the hundreds of jump points and descended onto Earth, their weapons discharging at the remaining ships of the part of Home Fleet they had jumped into.

The thick armor, DefNets and EWebs of the Terran Navy ships only barley where able to take most of the onslaught of energy. But the rest of the energy slammed into the thick armor, vaporising large chunks, opening whole decks to the hard vacuum of space before force fields snapped into place.

It was often said that Terran ships where capable of taking more punishment than ships of comparable size and mass and the Minbari once again found out that it was true. The multiple layers of defensive technologies gave the Terran ships an edge and the crews knew of them.

Only about fifty ships of about two hundred had been able to survive the jump points attacks and the following high powered energy bombardment and started to fire back, using the weapons they still had operational.

--------------------------------------------------------

Sheridan stared at the screen of _Lexington's_ bridge.

"Oh shit," he muttered.

"That's an understatement," Rommel said from the side.

Since the AI had transfered itself to _Lexington_, he had become a friend to Sheridan.

Rommel raised his head as if listening to an invisible voice.

"San Diego is getting into the fight," he stated and Sheridan could feel how the fur on his neck started to raise.

He swallowed and his look went to the ship count overlaying the sensory readout. The number of ships from Home Fleet were getting smaller.

--------------------------------------------------------

Neroon smiled to himself as he looked at the holographic display. The humans where putting up a fight with the few ships they had here, but they still would loose this fight and the planet in front of the fleet would cease to exist.

"Multiple new contacts," one of his subordinates suddenly called out," That are thousands..."

"What?" Neroons head whipped around.

"And three large energy sources."

The subordinate swallowed.

"The asteroids."

A steady stream of energy and projectile weapons suddenly opened up on the Minbari fleet, the first attack from the new contacts and the asteroids destroying one hundred Tanashis and twenty Sharlins outright, damaging even more.

"These humans," he muttered as his ship shook under his feet as a MAC disk slammed through a drive fin on his Sharlin," Destroy the new contacts!"

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Each of the Planetary Defense Platforms was small compared to the ships of the Union Navy. They were about the size of a frigate, but they lacked most things a manned ship had. Life support, String Drive, high powered gravimetric engines. So they were packing much more weapons on such little volume.

And they were cheap in construction and maintenance. And even if they where mostly outdated and build from technologies thirty years old, they were orbiting Earth in so large numbers that they were making up for it.

Receiving targeting data from the high powered sensory systems of the Planetary Siege Fortresses and orders from the high powered computer system of NORAD, they went into action, sending streams of laser beams, plasma bolts and gauss projectiles towards the Minbari vessels.

The huge weapon arrays of the Siege Fortresses followed suit a few moments later with missiles, plasma bolts, gauss and MAC rounds.

--------------------------------------------------------

"Thats a turkey shot," Sheridan muttered as he continued to stare at the display in front of him.

"It is," Rommel said from his side and they watched as another salvo from San Diego ripped two Sharlins and five Tanashis apart.

"Somehow I pity the Minbari," Sheridan said," They never knew what hit them."

Rommel nodded.

"It seems that Earth is indeed the best defended planet in Known Space."


	18. Chapter 18

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Interlude

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"The Minbari will loose."

"Yes."

"The humans aren't what they should be."

"Yes."

"It will upset the outcome of the Debate."

"Yet they created Order from the Chaos on their own."

Pause.

"Yes."

"They know of the Shadows."

"Yes. They will chose to fight for the Light."

"Yes."

"The Circle has changed."

"But it also became stronger."

"We will not interfere."

"Yes."


	19. Chapter 19

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Seventeen

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From the surface of Earth it looked like a big firework. Short living suns were lighting up before fizzling out. Not many people knew that each of the short lived suns was a space ship with hundreds of lives perishing.

Some said that Earth was the best protected planet in Known Space and the Battle of Earth just showed that they were right.

Half of Earth's Planetary Defense Platforms were in range of the battle and able to get their shots in, as where three of five Planetary Siege Fortresses. And they did their best to fill the vacuum of space between Earth and Moon with death in form of laser beams, plasma bolts, gauss and MAC rounds.

Thousands of fighters also filled their roles, attacking the smaller Nials, while the Platforms and Fortresses where dealing with the larger Tinashis and Sharlins. It was the largest dogfight in Earth history. Anti-fighter missiles homed in on Nials like an alcoholic on the next drink, gauss rounds found their marks, shattering crystalline armor or ripped through unfortunate Minbari warriors.

But even than, the Terran fighters where taking an huge toll, for each Nial taken out by a fighter, one fighter ceased to exist. And for each large ship, one or two Platforms blew up, dotting the night sky below with the light of their detonation.

--------------------------------------------------------

President Ryan closed his eyes for a moment and than looked back at the holographic projection in front of him. It was a massacre. And even if the Minbari took huge losses, they continued to push towards Earth.

Some minor holograms showed detail shot of the fight, especially around the huge Siege Fortresses. The Fortresses were under attack of a large number of Minbari fighters, who took out minor weapons emplacements, but didn't manage to do anything against the large weapons, as some of those where as large as a frigate.

"Send a general call to the Minbari and ask them to surrender," Ryan said finally," This blood shed doesn't have to happen."

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Neroon was furious and afraid, even if he didn't even admit it to himself. First the Battle of Zendamor was lost by the Warriors Caste, than Minbar was attacked by sev eral small Terran vessels and now the Warriors couldn't even destroy the defenses of a single planet.

"Aylt," one of his subordinates called out," A human transmission."

Neroon glared at the subordinate and had to hold to a nearby console as his ship was shook by another hit from one of those blasted Platforms.

"Play it," he demanded and the voice of a human filled the bridge.

Neroon's head became red as he listened to the human voice and its demand for the surrender of the fleet. It didn't matter that it was essentially true that the Minbari couldn't win this, not with half of their fleet already destroyed by the Platforms and Fortresses.

He pressed his eyes shut for a moment. This whole battle couldn't be won. And even if all ships continued to fight, the fleet would be completely wiped out by the humans.

His next decision mirrored the decision during the Battle of Zendamor.

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Space above Earth was busy as the Phalanx Drones started to enter the dogfights over the Siege Fortresses. Too many fighters had fallen pray to the faster and more nimble Nials, not to mention the flak positions.

And where the Phalanx Drones went, Nials were destroyed.

Each Phalanx Drone was a rather new development and not many had been produced. About ten meters in diameter they had the shape of a pentagon dodecaeder, a twelve sided object with pentagon shaped sides.

Propelled by twelve independent small gravimetric drives they had an unmatched maneuverability and could make turns only a computer controlled system could. Lacking the systems needed for life support of a pilot, it had a huge weapon load out, each side pointing a single rapid fire pulse plasma weapon into one of twelve directions. Combined with an autonomous computer system and its maneuverability, a Phalanx Drone was more than a match to the Nials.

The Drones zipped through the clouds of Nials, rotating around any axis, their rapid fire weapons raining death onto the Minbari fighters, wiping out entire wings in a short time.

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Not even half an hour after the beginning of the battle of Earth the Minbari had taken huge losses. About two thirds of their ships had fallen pray to the Defense Platforms, the cybernetic control systems, just a step below a real AI, taking out a higher percentage of Sharlins than Tanashis.

It was also not even ten minutes since the only about fifty Phalanx Drones had entered the fight. Losing only five of their number, they had managed to take down about one thousand Nials, reducing the total number down to about four and a half thousand from originally about ten thousand Nials.

The Earth Planetary Defense Network would have taken out more than that, but the Minbari did the only thing they could do, they bailed out. Jump Points opened and the remains of the Attack Fleet vanished into Jump Space.

Only a few Nials and some damaged Tanashis remained behind, but they were dealt with rather fast.

The Battle of Earth was over, half of the Earth Home Fleet and six hundred Defense Platforms destroyed. But Earth remained unscratched.

And the Pentagon already planned the next Operation against the Minbari.

--------------------------------------------------------

G'Kar looked at the old Angla'shok in front of him. He wouldn't have thought that the Minbari would so something like that. But considering the Terran success in this war, it was understandable. It was also understandable that it happened to be the Religious Caste who wanted peace. The Warriors wouldn't even dream of making peace on their own and the Workers were furious, according to the Angla'shok.

"I will see what I can do," he said and nodded," I'm about to go to Earth in a few days anyway. I will meet with President Ryan and tell him about our conversation."


	20. Chapter 20

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Eighteen

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"Whadda ya mean, Refit to Block 2?"

Sheridan just nearly stared at Brigadier General Alexander Doors.

"Exactly that," Doors said with a sigh," Since all future Ticonderoga's are build as Block 2, we will refit _Lexington_ to Block 2."

Doors thought that it was the logical thing to do. Block 2 incorporated some of the minor technologies gained from salvaged from Minbari ships. Added to that was the fact that salvaged weapons managed to fill a few holes in newly developed weapons.

"_Lexington_ isn't much more than a space frame at the moment. We have removed everything that was damaged during Zendamor. The armor, the weapons, nearly everything. We don't even know how you managed to hold that ship together. No to mention that the ships was to be modified for the new resident AI. The computer may be able to hold an AI, but a few minor changes in the computer outlay have to be done."

Sheridan sighed. That would hold _Lexington_ even longer in dock.

"And than there is the new Avatar system and docking ports for four Phalanx Drones."

Sheridan blinked a few times.

"Avatar system? Phalanx Drones?"

Doors sighed. It figured that he had to explain it to someone. He was just glad that he was an engineer and never had fought anywhere.

"The Avatar system is a system Anaheim Electronics brought out a year or so ago. Essentially its a robot, linked to a computer, commonly an AI. The AI can control the robot and it acts as a form or material body. I've heard that the AIs using Avatars send 'Thanks' email to Anaheim en mass. Rumors are that their mail server crashed three times because of that."

Sheridan shook his head and snorted.

"Well, anyway. Most AIs are able to control multiple Avatars. In your case Rommel requested two customized Avatars."

Sheridan nodded again.

"And the Phalanx Drones are also a new development. They proved to be combat worthy during the battle yesterday. We wanted to install them before anyway. They are autonomous vehicles able to track, attack and destroy several targets at the same time. I can give you the specs later."

"Okay, how long until we can leave dock?" Sheridan finally asked.

"Now that's the good news. Three weeks."

Again Sheridan stared at Doors who shrugged.

"Well, it seems that someone in the Pentagon decided that he or she, likes you and ordered me to get your ship back together ASAP. That means that we are using parts what were intended for a newly build Block 2 Ticonderoga and since we refit your ship, we are going to use those parts. Its even cheaper than a normal refit."

--------------------------------------------------------

G'Kar sighed as he looked at the swirls of jump space. Back to Earth and its strange inhabitants.

He still wondered how so many different sentient species could evolve on the same planet. Well, it was either that or the humans had used genetic modifications to create these 'Morphs'. Well the humans certainly had the technology to do so.

They even managed to get from a rather primitive race to being just one step below the Minbari, technology wise, in less than about three hundred years. And they possessed technologies that wasn't even thought of by other races.

But he had to say that he rather liked the humans. They lacked the generally xenophobic view of other races and an honesty that was refreshing. Well, they wouldn't work as a society if it wasn't that way, thanks to the Morphs. About ten percent of the population were Morphs after all, not included the about ten percent of people possessing different traits of Morphs, be it just a tail, other formed ears or one of those cat girls, the Terran Ambassador on Narn, Tokomo, was so obsessed with.

His thoughts went towards the talk he would hopefully have with the Terran President. He knew that the humans had tried to talk to the Minbari, telling them that the attack on the Valen'sha had been a, what had they called it? Ah yes, a misunderstanding. Quite an understatement.

But maybe it wasn't trying to make talks but rather the Angla'shok talking to the other Castes besides the Religious Caste. The Warriors where loosing one battle after the other and would want revenge and the Workers were mad at the bombardment of Minbar and the destruction of factories, at least according to his old friend.

"Time will tell," G'Kar muttered and sighed.

--------------------------------------------------------

"What are you saying?" Lord Refa asked and glared at the messenger.

"The Narn are to make contact with the Terrans," the messenger said, standing straight as if he had a stick up his behind, trying not to look nervous," The spies don't know why, but they have seen G'Kar with a Minbari."

Refa narrowed his eyes.

"Get out," he hissed," I need to think."

The messenger removed himself from the room as fast as he could and Refa looked down at the glass with Terran wine.

Refa was a man with visions. He was the power behind the Emperor and with a few pulls in the right direction, he would be Emperor. He couldn't need the Terrans making peace with the Minbari. That war was the only thing that kept the Terrans from advancing more than they already did.

They had surpassed the Centauri already, technology and other wise. And he as an Emperor couldn't need something like that. The Centauri needed to be the strong ones in Known Space. It was their destiny.

He had already pulled some strings. Raiders had been payed to take on Terran ships, bringing them to a dock controlled by the Refa family and into the waiting arms of the scientists. It would only be a matter of time until he possessed the secrets of the Terrans. Of cause his ships had also taken a look at the systems attacked by the Minbari, taking Minbari and Terran ships with them.

He couldn't need peace between the Terrans and the Minbari. They had to destroy each other in this war, so that he, Emperor Refa, could rule the Republic and the rest of Known Space. He would bring a Second Golden Age of Conquest and the Narn would be the first.

A plan formed in his mind and he started to laugh at his own brilliance.


	21. Chapter 21

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Nineteen

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President Ryans ears perked up as he looked at the Narn, G'Kar, in front of him.

"Let me get this straight," he said," A Minbari came to you, to inform us that they are willing to talk about a 'possible peace'?"

"Yes," G'Kar said with a nod and again he wondered how advanced the human mentality was, if they elected a Morph to be their leader. No other race would ever do so.

"Why only 'possible'?"

"Well," G'Kar said with a slight frown," The attack on the Valen'sha, the Minbari flagship, injured all of their ruling council. One of their leaders got into a coma. You have to understand that the Minbari are organized in a Caste system."

Ryan nodded.

"Our intelligence tells us that much."

"It does?" G'Kar asked and wondered how the humans got that information.

"Yes, in fact we know that the leader in Coma is supposed to be some form of major celebrity and is a man of great respect in the Gray Council. Together with another member of the Religious Caste."

That answer certainly showed how much the Narn and the other races tended to underestimate the humans. They certainly knew how to do their homework and G'Kar didn't doubt that they could outdo any intelligence network the Centauri had ever build up.

G'Kar nodded at that.

"Yes, that is accurate," he said and it certainly was about the same as his old friend had told him," However, the Warriors are extremely unlikely to stop the war. Too much wounded pride."

Ryan sighed.

"Why does it alway come down to wounded pride?"

G'Kar shrugged.

"It seems to come with their line of work. - The Workers are also currently supporting the Warriors, because of the bombardment of Minbari during the Battle of Zendamor."

Ryan winced. Now that had been an operation that didn't go as intended. Instead of bringing the Minbari directly to the table, they had redoubled their war affords. The Battle of Earth just being one of their operations. Others operations had been attacks on the systems of the former Minbari Protectorate.

"Than what about this Minbari who contacted you?"

"He is a member of a group of Minbari called Angla'shok. I don't know what they represent, but my old friend was directly send by the Relegious Caste for talking with a representative of the Terran Union. I was to tell you about that at a neutral spot."

Ryan nodded again.

"Good. But before I can tell you anything about that, I need to talk with the members of my government."

G'Kar nodded.

"You will find me at the Narn Embassy, Mr. President."

--------------------------------------------------------

"We're not even out of dock and we already get a new mission?" Sheridan asked Rommel, who stood next to him in the officers mess.

The AI was more than happy with the fact that he finally got an Avatar body or rather two, through he tended to leave his human shaped body in engineering for safekeeping while running around in the Fennec-morph one, like always dressed in an old WWII tanker uniform from the Afrika Korps.

"Not really surprising," he said," _Lexington_ is now Block 2 and got a little more 'umph' behind the weapons."

Sheridan looked at the Avatar of the AI that has assumed duty as XO of _Lexington_ since his old had been critically injured during Zendamor and was currently in _Norfolk's_ hospital.

He was right through. _Lexington_ was to be outfitted with six new triple mount turrets, opposed to the dual mount turrets of Block 1 and an additional spinal mounted weapon next to the two MAC guns. Not to mention the four Phalanx Drones in their own docking ports behind the turrets and a slightly changed VLS layout, now also packing the new and coming MK 69 torpedoes with 1kt non-nuclear warheads.

"Anything about this new assignment?"

"Not really," Rommel said with a shrug," All I know at the moment is that we will be alone on this one and go to an at the moment unknown system to meet a Narn ship there."

Sheridan raised an eyebrow.

"Don't look at me like that, John. It comes directly from the Oval Office."

"Isn't there a way to find out what it will be?"

Rommel looked a little though fully for a moment.

"Well, I could try to hack into the computer of the White House..." he said and Sheridan stared at him for a moment," But I don't think that Roosevelt would like it if his old man snoops around in his hardware."

"Roosevelt?"

Rommel gave the blinking Sheridan a grin.

"You know that AIs procreate, don't you? He is my sort of son. The result of the algorithms of about ten AIs."

Suddenly Sheridan knew that he shouldn't ask how that went by. Even through he knew that it wasn't something like sex of natural sentients, his mind showed him a very detailed orgy and he had tho shake his head forcefully to forget the picture.

"I guess you have a very dirty mind, eh John?"

"Oh shut up..."


	22. Chapter 22

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Twenty

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"Okay, here we are," Rommel said and looked at Sheridan," The Edding system."

Sheridan nodded at his XO and resident AI. He was still a bit put of about the refit of _Lexington_ to Block 2, but in the end it was all for the best. Especially since _Lexington_ was one of the first ships with a NEDAR system, passive neutrino based system that was to sense any Minbari ship in existence, with activated stealth or without.

During the Jump Space transit they had done a few drills to familiarize themselves with the new systems of the Block 2 variant of the Ticonderoga class, especially with the new weapons available.

"Contact," Lieutenant Karl Davis, Alpha shifts sensory technician, said," T'Ralie class Narn transport. Nothing much about it, through it seems that the owner of the ship needs to take a look at its reactor."

The Fennec-morph avatar beside Sheridan gave a short chuckle.

"Amazing little thing this NEDAR system."

Sheridan nodded.

"Contact the transport and tell than to prepare for docking with us. Where going to take G'Kar with us down."

"A pitty that we don't have the hangar space to take the whole freighter with us."

Sheridan nodded again.

--------------------------------------------------------

G'Kar sighed as he stepped down into the artificial gravity of _Lexington_. He hated travel in Zero-G. It always made him sick. His look went to the two men of the 'Welcome Squad', a sandy furred morph in a normal Terran Union Navy uniform and the rank markings of a Major and another also sandy furred morph with huge ears and a uniform G'Kar couldn't identify.

"Ambassador G'Kar," the morph with the normal uniform said," Welcome aboard Lexington. I'm Major John Sheridan, the commander of this ship."

He pointed at the other morph.

"My Executive Officer and resident AI, Erwin Rommel."

"Ambassador," Rommel said and G'Kar looked a bit puzzled.

"Ai-Ei?" G'Kar asked and looked at Rommel.

Rommel on the other hand looked at Sheridan.

"You know that most other races don't know what an AI is..."

"Hey, it's not like I'm used to the fact that someone doesn't know."

G'Kar observed the whole thing with a healthy dose of interest, until Rommel looked back to him.

"My apologies, Ambassador," he said," Everyone in the Terran Union knows what an AI is, so it took us a bit in surprise."

"Not a problem," G'Kar answered," I am sure it's not that important."

Than he looked around.

"I take it that we will go to the shuttle that will take us down to the surface now."

Sheridan and Rommel shared a knowing smile.

"Something like that."

--------------------------------------------------------

"Okay, people," Sheridan said and sat down in his command chair," Lets get the party started."

G'Kar was standing next to Rommel, feeling a bit out of place on the bridge of Lexington. Especially since holographic projections were floating everywhere in the room, showing just how much more advanced the humans were compared to the Narn.

"The transport had undocked and proceeds to a parking orbit," Davis said and Sheridan nodded.

"Than lets get her down," Shjeridan said with a nod," Sound blue alert. Everyone ready for atmospheric reentry."

G'Kar blinked rapidly for a few times. They couldn't mean what he thought they meant.

"Deceleration on my mark," Rommel said," Mark."

Red lights switched on for a few seconds and G'Kar could see how several indicators for the speed of the ship abruptly went down.

"What are you doing?" he asked, near panic as he realized that it was what he had thought of.

"Standard reentry manouver," Rommel said," All modern ships of the Navy build since ten years ago are capable of atmospheric reentry and soft landings on the surface of a planet with atmosphere."

G'Kar stared at Rommel as if he had said that he was an artificial life form, which he hadn't, yet.

"Deploying Plasma shields," someone said and several other lights went green.

The Plasma Shields were a force field similar to the force fields used inside a fusion reactor, but on a greater scale, used to shield the hull of a ship from the heat of an atmospheric reentry.

"Besides we are dropping larger massed to the surface of a planet on a regular basis. Just take a look at the Ithacus mass freighters. They are capable of getting ten mega tons down to a planet by just dropping through the atmosphere and making a soft landing. Or the suborbital mass transports on Earth."

G'Kar swallowed. The humans were indeed much more developed than any race would have liked. To think that a shipof about two megatons was able to survive a reentry.

The ships wasn't shaking as simple shuttles used to when they dropped into an atmosphere, quite the opposite.

"Deactivating gravitational drives, switching to antigrav and scramjet. We're on an optimal glide path."


	23. Chapter 23

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Twenty One

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Sheridan had to chuckle as he looked over to _Lexington_ from the bunker of the automated scientific station of Edding. It was a strange sight to see the large Fast Attack Cruiser standing on the surface of the planet on its about twenty stubby legs, each doubling as armor segment.

Sure the legs were enough to hold the two mega tons of _Lexington_ above the ground, but the anti gravity systems were still activated, taking care of about 99 percent of the weight.

"It will make quite an impression to the Minbari, I guess," G'Kar said from somewhere beside hims.

"That is if they see it."

G'Kar blinked a few times, still a bit rattled by the fact that they had gone down to the planet with the whole cruiser and not just with a shuttle.

"Huh?"

Sheridan grinned a bit and nodded over to Rommel, who was present with his human Avatar. His grin widened a bit as the huge silhouette of _Lexington_ simply disappeared to be replaced by a small hill, as the Holographic Imager system activated. The Holo Imager was a system designed for camouflage purposes, normally used to hide from Raiders in form of a small asteroid, to strike at them when they didn't expect it.

G'Kar blinked a few times before shaking his head.

"Your holographic projection technology."

"Ooohhhh," Rommel made," And people think that the other Races of Known Space can't learn."

Sheridan gave Rommel a short glare.

"By the way," Rommel continued," A ship just left the Jump Gate. Neutrino signature suggests a Linshara class transport."

"ETA?"

"About an hour."

--------------------------------------------------------

Loral Refa wasn't exactly one of those people who liked to do dirty jobs for his uncle. Especially if it was a dirty job like this. But, he told himself, this would bring him closer to another of his rather rapid promotions.

He was a little put up by the order of his uncle to meet with other ships controlled by the Refa family. Especially since those ships happened to be two Primus and eight Vorchan, without his own Vorchan.

It seemed a bit too much to crash a simple arms deal between Narn and Raiders.

What he didn't know of cause was the fact that the commanders of the two Primus were the only ones knowing exactly what they were up to crash. Not a simple arms deal, but rather a meeting between Terrans and Mibari with the presumed presence of a Terran battleship. But not even the spies of the Refa family did know what kind of ship the Terrans had send, but it couldn't be more than a rather old Bremen class frigate.

--------------------------------------------------------

Lennon's shuttle had touched down next to the bunker system of the scientific outpost the humans were maintaining in the Edding system. It wasn't much, just another proof of the sheer curiosity of the human race.

He had had much time to study the humans, through he thought that these 'Marines' were a rather bad example of the humans. The Marines had ended up with the Angla'shok after the Warriors Caste had lost interest in them. Especially since the interrogations hadn't brought anything of value for the Warriors in space battles. The battles of Zendamor and Earth had shown that much.

The Angla'shok on the other side hadn't tried to interrogate the Marines. They were treated with the same amount of respect they treated everyone with, through it wasa bit colored by several letters Valen had given to the Angla'shok, indicating that the humans would play a role in the future war against the Shadows. Not many besides the head of the Angla'shok knew about these letters, not even the Gray Council.

Lennon was a bit curious about these humans as he left the shuttle and walked the last few meters to the bunker. He didn't kn ow if he should trust in the statement of some Marines that the 'Morphs', as they were called, were members of the human race, who happened to be mutated by radioactivity from the last half of a century they called 20th century.

He followed several sounds that turned out to be a conversation and entered one of the bunkers. Raising the hand with his weapons, he looked at the people in the bunker. One was a Narn, his old friend G'Kar, the others a normal human in a uniforms he had never seen and a massive Morph in a normal Terran Union Navy uniform. Lennon knew enough about the human military to be able to tell that the Morph was commander of a ship, was part of the part of the Terran Union Navy called Battle Field and held the rank of a Major.

"It seems our guest had arrived," the normal human said with an expression that could be best described as smug grin," And he's pointing a weapon at us."

"It is only a security measure," Lennon said.

The Morph just rolled his eyes at the human and took a step towards Lennon.

"Major John Sheridan," he said and reached out with his hand in a gesture called 'shaking hands' by the Marines," commander of _Lexington_."

Lennon looked at the hand before taking and shaking it. Like one of the Marines had said he was gripping the Morphs hand as hard as he could, but the Morph increased pressure on his own, nearly making Lennon wince.

"You are Sheridan," he asked with a little surprise and a little concern.

He had heard the stories of a heavily crippled ship taking on and winning against the not even lightly damaged _Black_ _Star_. One of the Marines had even managed to identify the ship on footage the few surviving ships had brought home from Zendamor. The ship was named _Lexington_ and the commander was Major John Sheridan.

It had come to the Warriors ears and even if they didn't like it, they had to admit that Sheridan was worthy of being a Minbari warrior, through the Marines had said that he had guts. But didn't everyone have guts? These Marines were puzzling most of the time.

Anyway, the Warriors had taken to calling Sheridan 'Starkiller'.

Sheridan raised an eyebrow, but Lennon continued.

"I am Lennon."

Sheridan nodded and pointed at the human.

"This is Erwin Rommel, my executive officer," he said and than pointed at G'Kar," And that is..."

Lennon interrupted him.

"No need to introduce us. We know each other."

G'Kar nodded.

"Yes, he was the iniciator of this meeting."

Sheridan nodded in understanding.

"Okay," he said," Lets get down to business."

But before anything could happen, G'Kar's communicator came to life.

"Centauri just jumped into the system!" came the panicked voice of a Narn through the communicator.


	24. Chapter 24

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Twenty Two

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"I can confirm that. Two Primus and nine Vorchan."

Sheridan looked at Rommel, before looking back at Lennon and G'Kar.

"What the hell ate the Centauri doing here."

"Crash the party, I guess," they just destroyed the Narn transport."

G'Kar looked like he was about to get pale, but since he was reptilian in origin, it was a problem.

"And one Vorchan fired missiles at our position."

"Shit," Sheridan cursed," take them out."

"Yes, Captain, oh my Captain."

Sheridan glared at Rommel, while Lennon and G'Kar looked puzzled at the two.

"Taking out?" Lennon asked," What?"

G'Kard shook his head at his old friend.

"Lets just say that we all tend to underestimate the humans."

A deafening roar suddenly went of in short distance to the bunker and Lennon twitched. The roar was followed by a loud explosion and a few moments after that another explosion rather close to the bunker, shaking it.

"The good new is that I manged to intercept the missiles," Rommel said and Lennon stared at him as if he had grown another head," The bad new are that the debris of one missile managed to hit and destroy your shuttle, Mr. Lennon."

"How?"

Sheridan shook his head and started to run towards the entrance of the bunker.

"Later, we must get to _Lexington_."

"What?"

--------------------------------------------------------

Lennon felt more than a bit overwhelmed. The had just passed his burning shuttle in a mad run towards the small hill next to the bunker system, as the hill simply disappeared and revealed a large Terran Cruiser. He could even read the name painted onto the hull in large letters. _Lexington_.

How had the humans been able to repair the ship that fast? The battle of Zendamor had happened only four weeks ago and the trip from Zendamor to Earth lasted about a week.

He briefly noticed that he should be glad for the lower gravity of Edding, or he would have been even more winded as they reached a large lift underneath the large bulk of the Terran Cruiser.

How in Valen's name had the Terran been able to land a ship that large on a planet? It had to wight more than two Mega tons.

Lennon heard a loud clang as the lift closed behind him and noticed how Sheridan looked at Rommel.

"We have lift of. We will reach free space in about two minutes. Tactical is working on firing sollutions."

Sheridan nodded and litteraly shot out of the lift as the door opened. G'Kar shrugged and followed Sheridan. Lennon felt that it would be best to also follow Sheridan. He also noticed that Rommel disappeared into another direction.

About a minute later they were standing on the Bridge of _Lexington_ and while G'Kar and Lennon himself looked rather winded, Sheridan didn't.

--------------------------------------------------------

"Status report," Sheridan demanded as he entered the bridge of _Lexington_ and made a beeline towards the Fennec-morph Avatar of Rommel.

"We have several more missile launches from other Vorchans to the planet, while the Primus' are linding up for something that looks like orbital bombardment."

"Why?"

"No idea. But it seems that the Primus' are outfitted with massdrivers."

"Massdrivers," camefrom behind from G'Kar.

"Whatever they want," Rommel said," they want it destroyed big time."

Sheridan nodded. Massdrivers were outlawed by almost everyone in Known Space. Just the Terran Union hadn't signed the ban of those weapons, because a good amount of weapons, such as the MACs were based on Massdriver technology and would rob them their most efficiant weapons.

"Ten seconds for orbit."

"Status of the firing sollutions?"

"Allmost there, Major. But we got a nice crackshot at one of the Primus' with our spinal mounts."

Sheridan smiled an evil smile and Lennon and G'Kar felt like hiding somewhere, while the crew managed to ignore it.

"Fire spinal mounts," he said at the exactly same time as _Lexington_ reached the outer reachers of Edding's atmosphere and entered orbital space.

Two MACs and one 1000 centimeter Mega Graser opened fire at the first Primus, the graser simply vaporizing huge amounts of frontal armor and the bow, while the two MAC disks slammed into the wings of the massive Centauri battleship, simply ripping them of, reducing the mighty ship to not much more than scrap metal.


	25. Chapter 25

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Twenty Three

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Loral Refa swallowed as one of the two Primus just blew up right next to his ship.

"Great Maker," one of the bridge crew called out and Loral looked over at him and the screen in front of him.

Than he swallowed. A Terran warship just came straight at them. From within the atmosphere of the planet. That was something that should be impossible. But here he had the proof right in front of him.

Worse yet it happened to be one of the new warships he had no data on. This could end bad.

"Fire!" he yelled," Open fire at that ship!"

--------------------------------------------------------

_Lexington_ shuddered as Centauri weapons started to hit the hull and Sheridan growled deep from the back of his throat.

"Get me a fire solution for the other Primus."

The bridge crew was working as professionally as always and held the same calm they had at the Battle of Zendamor. Sure there was a Minbari aboard the ship and on the bridge, but in the end it didn't matter at this moment.

"Fire solutions for Bogie Three and Five."

"Fire."

The six massive turrets of _Lexington_ turned towards two of the Vorchans and not even three seconds later they opened up on them, spitting Gamma Ray bursts and Gauss Projectiles at them.

The lance like beams of the Grasers dug deep trenches into the armor of the Vorchans, while the Gauss Projectiles just penetrated them before their high explosive warhead detonated, causing massive hull breaches on the ships and opening them to hard vacuum.

One of the Vorchans was reduced to nothing moire than debris, having been literally shred to pieces by Graser and Gauss fire. The other detonated in a huge ball of atomic fire as their reactors lost containment and bathed the whole ship with super hot plasma.

"Three down, eight to go," Rommel said from one side," And I don't like it that they scratch my finish. We just left dock a week ago."

--------------------------------------------------------

Lennon didn't know what to think of the display that was playing in front of him. The humans were to calm about this battle for his taste and he wasn't sure how he should react now that they had clearly shown him that they were more than capable of doing things he never had thought could be done.

Landing a two Mega ton ship on a planet. Lifting off and reaching space in less than two minutes. Destroying a Centauri Primus with a single salvo of spinal mounted weapons. Sure the last could have been done by a Tanashi, but it was still quite a feat by a young race, especially of one that was in space for only about two or three centuries.

Sheridan proved himself to be what the Warriors thought of him. He was worthy of being a Warrior. But at the same time he was doing everything different to the Warrior caste.

"Firing solution for VLS One. Three Vorchan."

"Launch."

Lennon was a bit puzzled at the last order. Lauch? Several green dots appeared on the holographic representation of the ship and he had the urge to sigh. The humans were using missiles. Not really the choice of weapons he would have used.

"Missiles have acquired targets. Final engagement sequence."

He winced as he watched another hologram, showing simultaneous detonations all over the surface of three Vorchans. That was insane, but effective. The missiles, in other cases not the best weapons against a capital ship, had blown apart three Vorchans at the same time.

"What about Primus two."

"Ten seconds, Major. Were still turning to face him."

Spinal mounted weapons, Lennon thought.

"Primus two acquired."

Lennon saw how the Primus started to turn away from Lexington, as if he was knowing what would come now.

"Fire."

Again Lennon could feel a rumbling going through the whole body of the ship and swallowed as he Primus met the same fate as the other had done.

"Hull Breach starboard. Deck Three. Emergancy Forcefields in place."

Forcefields? Lennon swallowed again. The humans had force fields. How did they manage to get those? And why didn't they use them to protect their ships? Had the Abbai given them the force field technology?

Somehow Lennon doubted that they had done so. The Abbai never had even shared their technology with the Minbari.

"Lets mop up the rest," he heard Sheridan say," Lay covering fire into the direction of the Jump Gate. And get me an intact ship. I want a few answers."

--------------------------------------------------------

Lord Refa shuddered. It was as if someone had suddenly emptied a bucket of cold water down his back.

Something had gone wrong. But he doubted that it was his small black operation.

He shook his head and drank from the goblet of fine French wine, looking at the movements of the dancer in front of him with a smile on his face.


	26. Chapter 26

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Twenty Four

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Lennon's mind was still racing as he entered a room Sheridan had called 'Briefing Room'. He had just witnessed the destruction of a Centauri force by a single Terran warship, while he had been aboard said Terran warship.

The Centauri had been second only to the Minbari technology wise and this single Terran cruiser had 'bitchslapped' the Centauri and destroyed two Primus and nine Vorchan. If someone had told him that a Terran cruiser, who was more than out massed and out gunned was able to do so before today, he had thought that the one had been mad. But now he wasn't really all that sure if he hadn't gone mad.

"'Always out numbered. Never out gunned,'" he muttered, remembering a quote a Marine had used.

"What?" Sheridan asked and Lennon blinked a few times before coming back to the present.

"Sorry," Lennon said and sighed," I was thinking."

His look went towards G'Kar, who was ginning like a mad man. Not really a surprise, considering that he had just witnessed the destruction of a Centauri force.

"I really need to speak to President Ryan again," G'Kar muttered," The Narn Regime could really need such weapons."

Lennon twitched a bit. Of cause the Narn would like to get their hand on these weapons. That way they could deal with the Centauri once and for all. Or at least not fear that the Centuari came back in force anymore.

"Please sit down," Sheridan said after a moment and gestured to two of the seats in the room.

Lennon sat down first, as he needed to sit down, while his mind tried to wrap itself around all what he had seen. Not just the defeat of the Centauri, with only little damage to _Lexington_, but the fact that this ship had landed on the surface of a planet and launched back into space in less then two minutes. The proclaimed use of forcefields, the excessive use of holographic projections almost everywhere. Not to mention the fact that his shuttle had never even seen _Lexington_, while she was hidden beneath a holographic projection.

The humans were more than they appeared to be at the first glance. They had advanced faster in technology than every race before them and Lennon somehow knew that the hadn't stolen this technologies or found it in old ruins or something like that. The way the humans treated the technology, they had to be the ones who developed it in the first place.

"Okay," Sheridan said and broke Lennon's string of thoughts," lets get back to business."

"Yes," Lennon said and sighed," It would be the best."

He really needed to make this peace. After the display a few minutes ago against the Centauri he wasn't sure if the Warriors believe in a victory over the Terran Union was something they could realize. Not with the fall of the Protectorate and the Battles of Zendamor and Earth to show that the Minbari could be defeated by someone else than the Shadows.

For the first time since he had heard and read the letters from Valen, he believed in them. The Minbari needed the humans to win the next war against the Darkness.

"First," Lennon said and sighed again," I would like to know why you opened fire at the _Valen'sha_."

He saw a brief flash of pain going over Rommel's face. The strange human had been in the Briefing room before they had entered it and it was a bit strange that the Executive Officer hadn't been on the bridge during the fight against the Centauri.

"It was a bug," Rommel said and also sighed.

Lennon blinked. He didn't understand how an insect that caused a ship to fire at another.

"A bug? An insect?"

Rommel shook his head.

"No. A bug is an error in a computer program. There was an error in the AEGIS Fire Control System of the _Von_ _Braun_. The ship had went to yellow alert before the meeting and combined with the unique way of scanning used by your ship, the _Valen'sha_, the error came to the front, causing the AEGIS System to designate the ship as enemy and go into Armageddon Self Defense Mode."

Lennon stared at Rommel, unable to fully understand it.

"An error in a computer system?"

"Our weapons systems are more dependent on computer control than those of other races. And our computers are more closely liked with each other."

That Lennon could understand. And again it showed him how much even he ad underestimated the humans.

"But," Sheridan said," The error was placed there during the last refit on _Von_ _Braun_."

"Placed there?" Lennon echoed again.

"Yes," Rommel continued for Sheridan," The head of one of our intelligence agencies was under influence of a foreign force and that force wanted to play the humans and Minbari against each other, so that we would destroy each other."

Lennon stared at Rommel again.

"Who would do something like that?"

Lennon knew the answer to his own question, but he prayed that the answer wouldn't be the one he dreaded.

"They call themselves 'Shadows'," Rommel said and Lennon slumped fully into his seat.

His worst fears had just been confirmed. The Shadows were back. And they were already playing with the Younger Races.


	27. Chapter 27

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Twenty Five

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"Shadows?" Lennon asked, his voice shaking," How do you know that?"

Rommel sighed and seemed to look through him for a moment.

"About ten years ago, a private expedition, funded by the Smithsonian Institute went to a planet called Za'Ha'Dum by most of the races to take a look at possible remains of the civilization that was said to have lived there."

Za'Ha'Dum. As Rommel mentioned that name Lennon meant that his heard had stopped and he stared at Rommel.

"Za'ha'Dum is the home of the Shadows," Lennon whispered.

"We know that now too," Rommel said with a sigh and continued," Anyway, about two month later the expedition came back home, telling everyone that they found nothing. In reality all members of the expedition were brainwashed or something like that and turned into Shadow agents. Back than they started to manipulate us. Some of these manipulations were actually good for us, others weren't."

"Shadows manipulations were good?"

Lennon couldn't believe his ears. How could the manipulations of the Shadows be good?

"The were good in a way because all ships of the New Generation, _Lexington_ included, were designed after Senator Mordan Clarke, one of the Shadow agents, made a proposal to have them build. The same is true for several new weapons systems."

Lennon swallowed.

"I doubt we would do so good in this war if it hadn't happened."

"How were you able to find them out?"

Sheridan chuckled dryly.

"Morphs got a few very good instincts," he said and than looked at Rommel," Show him the vid from the Oval Office."

Lennon blinked a few times. He knew that the 'Oval Office' was the office of the President of the Terran Union, but he failed to see the connection between it and the finding of the Shadows.

A holographic projection appeared above the table, showing President Ryan, one of the Morphs, talking to a normal human.

Suddenly Ryan moved, pulling a huge hang gun from underneath the office table, aiming it somewhere. The gun barked once and hit something invisible. The invisible target turned visible and Lennon felt his stomach cramp.

Another creature shimmered into view, slicing through the air and the fabric of his suit. Ryan turned around and the gun barked again, reducing the head of the other creature to a shower of black gore.

Than Ryan turned to face the other human, who looked shocked, aiming the gun at his head.

"Please give me an excuse," Ryan said finally with a coldness in his voice that could have frozen helium.

With that the vid stopped and the holo collapsed.

Lennon stared at the spot where the holo had been for several minutes in stunned silence. Than his mind began to race, trying to wrap itself around the pictures he had just seen. Next to him G'Kar tried to do the same.

The images they had seen, had just proved everything they believed in as being true. Be it the Book of G'Quann or the reports from the last Shadow War.

The room remained silent for several more minutes and Rommel looked at Sheridan.

"You know," Rommel said," I think we broke their brains."

--------------------------------------------------------

Like in all those week and month before, Delenn was sitting next to the bed of Dukhat, just being there for him, trying her best to bring him back. Everything she had tried had failed.

She sighed. She really hoped that the talks between Lennon and the Terrans worked and that peace would finally come. She knew that they couldn't win this war. The Warriors had tried to call upon the help of the Vorlons to fight against 'an enemy backed by the Darkness'. Nut they had failed. All ships send to the Vorlons had never returned home.

She shook her head at the thought. The humans weren't backed by the Shadows. Deep within herself she knew it. But neither she nor he second remaining Satai of the Religious Caste had been able to talk sense into the Warriors. They had managed to calm down the Workers, but they now chose to remain neutral in all this. The losses during the bombing run on Minbari by the Terran Union had made sure that they wouldn't talk for the humans.

And to the Warriors, this whole war was the fight to destroy an enemy that had shown how easily the Minbari could be beaten. The Minbari may have the edge technology wise, but the Terran proved to be the ones who had the greater numbers and the better tactics.

Delenn sighed and stood up from her seat, grabbing the walking stick she needed these days. The knee of her left leg hadn't healed properly and she had problems to walk now, but with the walking stick she could walk without many problems.

"Please wake up, Dukhat," she whispered and looked at the large window front of the room," We need you."

"I'm awake," Dukhat finally answered her call, very silent, but still audible.

--------------------------------------------------------

"You want what?" Lennon had finally gotten himself together to finally talk about peace.

"The Senate wants the Minbari responsible for the destruction of our colonies," Rommel said, glad that he was an AI at the moment and could be a really good diplomat," They are going to be put before a court to face charges for genocide."

"Genocide?" Lennon echoed and G'Kar blinked next to him.

"The attacks and the complete destruction of our colonies have killed more than five million civilians. Five million."

Lennon shuddered. He had never imagined that the Warriors had killed than many people. It was insane. Why had the Terran Union that many people on a few new colonies? How had they managed to get that many people there in less than twenty years.

He paused in his thoughts. They had managed to rescue more than a billion Dilgar in less than five years before their sun went nova. They had the capabilities to transport much more people.

He closed his eyes, forcing down his feelings. Five million dead, just for the damage on a single ship, done by a faulty computer program, manipulated by the Shadows.

"I need to talk to my government before I can say anything.


	28. Chapter 28

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Twenty Six

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The members of the Gray Council were in turmoil. Dukhat had awoken just about two weeks ago and wasn't even able to walk properly. But still, he had called for a meeting of the Full Gray Council.

Even worse, he had personally talked to the Warriors, trying to bring them away from their War with the Terran Union.

"This is outrage," one of the Warrior Satais said as he looked at Dukhat, who was sitting in a hover chair, the only way for him to move at all at the moment," The Terrans have attacked us. Their attack has injured every single one of us, especially you, Dukhat."

Dukhat just gave the Satai a level look.

"Than you don't know the latest news," he said and than glanced at Delenn for a moment," Delenn has already contacted the Terran Union through the Rangers and the Narn. And..."

He wasn't able to speak as the Warriors glared at Delenn and started to speak at the same time. Or better yell at the same time. The Workers just gave her a curious glance, as they had finally found back to their normal neutrality between the Warriors and the Religious Caste.

"Silence," Dukhat finally said with a firm voice and had that silencing effect he desired.

The Warriors still glared at Delenn, but held themselves back in respect of Dukhat, who still was the greatest leader of the Minbari since Valen in their minds.

"Enter, Lennon," Delenn said and the leader of the Rangers entered the circle of the Nine members of the Gray Council.

"I have personally send Lennon for the talks," Delenn said with a voice that carried an equal firmness as had Dukhats," And he has returned with a few very interesting news."

Lennon bowed at the Satais and cleared his throat.

"Very interesting indeed," he said," I have talked to the man known as Starkiller to the Warriors Caste."

The Warriors were silent as they looked at Lennon. Major John Sheridan, Starkiller, the man who had destroyed the _Black_ _Star_ with his crippled ship was one of the few humans the warriors did respect. And he had earned that respect.

"They have proof that the attack on the _Valen'sha_ was a defect in the fire control computer of the _Von_ _Braun_."

Again the Warriors started to speak at the same time, trying to question Lennon about this proof, until Dukhat silenced them once more.

"Lennon will give us his report, than we will question him."

Lennon bowed at Dukhat and continued.

"Furthermore they have proof that the defect was sabotage by several humans controlled by a foreign force."

He made a dramatic pause.

"And they found out that the foreign force is the old enemy of the Light. The Shadows."

At his last sentence, a holographic projection started to play, showing how the President of the Terran Union, Mark Ryan, killed two Shadow underlings with his weapon, before pointing the weapon at the head of the man under their influence.

The silence that followed was so deep that one could hear it, until Lennon continued.

"Several of the leading personalities were under Shadow influence," he said and the holographic projection changed to show a Terran Court," They have killed all Shadows in their presence and sentenced the men and women under Shadow influence to death for treason."

The holo changed again, showing how a man, the subtitle called him Morgan Clarke, was placed in front of a firing squad and killed by several HV bullets.

"The Terran Union wants for our races to come to a peaceful solution for all this. They are willing to give the planets of the Protectorate back to us and only call for one condition."

Again he made a pause for effect.

"They want the Warriors responsible for the deaths of five million humans and Dilgar on the colonies destroyed during the first attacks on the Terran Union. They are going to be put before a court to face charges for genocide."

The turmoil followed by the last sentences by Lennon was greater than before.

--------------------------------------------------------

Doctor Mai Ling looked at the screen in front of her and frowned. How could something as large as that lay under the surface of Mars for so long and without anyone noticing it?

The AIs put in charge of the excavation of the Shadow battle ship had finally finished to completely excavate the ship and brought it out to its full dark glory.

Mai Ling shuddered as she looked at that ship. It reminded her too much of a spider and the black color didn't help any. She turned away from the screen and looked at the holographic projection of Livingston, the AI in charge of the excavation. She knew that humans weren't allowed into a radius of a hundred kilometer from the ship and that only AIs and robots were working on it, and the excavation on Europa.

"How long until you get through the armor?"

Livingston shrugged and sighed.

"I have no idea. Every time we try to open the armor some sort of black stuff comes out of it and repairs the area we just destroyed. As if it was alive."

Mai Ling raised an eyebrow.

"'Black Stuff'? Not very scientific."

Livingston sighed again.

"Don't tell me. But we managed to get a good look at the stuff before it destroyed one of our electron microscopes. We are dealing with Nano Tech."

"Nano Tech?"

"Much more advanced than ours. We currently try something new and want to use forcefields specially designed to hold back Nano Tech for the next try. But I think we will fail again. Those Nanites are smaller than anything we have."

"Well, try your best," Mai Ling said," We need to know everything we can about the Shadows. They will come for us when they realize that they can't longer manipulate."

"We will try, Doctor. But don't await a wonder. That thing is a tough motherfer."


	29. Chapter 29

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Twenty Seven

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President Mark Ryan sighed. This wasn't exactly what he had in mind, but it worked.

Attacks from the Minbari had stopped at the same time as _Lexington_ had reported back to the Pentagon, that the leaders of the Minbari, the Gray Council wanted to talk face to face about peace.

That was about two weeks abo. Even if it failed, it had at least gotten some time for reinforcing the front line with new vessels, ready to commerce 'Operation Okinawa' in case the peace talks failed.

The problem was that there was no place that could have been used for the talks. The Edding system was compromised as meeting spot when the Centauri had turned up to destroy this chance for peace.

Oh, Ryan had had a talk over a Red Channel with Emperor Tuhan, but he claimed that he knew nothing about it and that, while the ships had belonged to the Refa family, had been reported as being abducted by Raiders.

Ryan knew it was Bullshit and Tuhan knew it was bullshit too. But it was exactly what Lord Refa had told the Emperor and there was nothing that pointed into another direction. Anyway, Mossad was already on the case, but they were under orders not to deal with anyone who may be involved in that.

Back to the present. They had been forced to look for a place to talk about the peace and the Foreign Office had come up with a system closer to Terran space. The Eridani system. Two suns orbiting each other, Euphrates and Tigris. Several planets one, Eridani III, with a hin atmosphere. A Battle Plate had been in the system for several week before the war to monitor strange occurrences on Eridani III, but before they found any clue, they had to retreat to enter front line service.

Now a small Terran fleet was floating close to Eridani III, waiting for the Minbari fleet to arrive. It was only four ships. Three Ticonderoga class Fast Attack Cruisers, including _Lexington_, on a request of the Minbari, and _Air_ _Force_ _One_ the ship of all Presidents before him.

Sure,_ Air Force One _wasn't a plane or a shuttle, neither was there a Terran Air Force anymore, but the name had stuck since the foundation of the Terran Union and the first use of a space ship for travel of the President.

_Air_ _Force_ _One_ was refit civilian Aida class luxury cruiser, outfitted with the latest in communications technology, mounting one of the most powerful sensory and ECM suits after Battle Plates, but it all fit since there was enough space on the one kilometer long ship converted for use of just the President and his staff.

"Mr. President," a female voice said behind him and he turned to look at the holographic projection of a woman, several bands of alpha numeric data floating around her.

"What is it, Cortana," he asked his personal AI assistant who chuckled a bit in turn.

"Our guests have arrived, Sir. One of the ships classified as _Black_ _Star_ class, two Sharlins and four Tanashis."

Ryan frowned.

"It figured that the Minbari wouldn't come without a show of force."

Cortana chuckled again and gave him an evil grin.

"Do you think they know that we have Third Battle Squadron around _Pillar of Autumn_ just a light minute out in interplanetary space under full EMCON?"

"I kind of doubt it."

--------------------------------------------------------

Samuel Dawson wasn't a happy camper. He hated what would happen in the near future. Mainly because he would do it. He hated something else even more. The fact that he was pressed to do it.

He knew that he would die when he did it, but he had to think about his family. If he didn't do it all of them would die.

He closed his eyes and sighed. He would never let that happen.

--------------------------------------------------------

Ryan looked at the holographic projection in front of him and at the six armed Minbari shuttles coming closer towards _Air Force One_. They were bringing the Gray Council on his ship, together with a good number of guards, Warriors according to intel and Lennon, who had negotiated this meeting with Major Sheridan.

Sheridan and his XO Rommel were already aboard _Air Force One_, as the Minbari had requested his presence during the peace negotiations.

Ryan was curious about the members of the Gray Council, especially this Dukhat. He seemed to be quite the charismatic leader. According to intel sources he had been in coma until recently and it was a testament to Mnbari medical technology that he was ready to get through this obviously stressful negotiations.

He looked back at Cortana, whose Avatar body was standing next to him, holographic projections of alphanumeric symbols floating around her. She obviously was one of the few AIs who wanted to be recognized as being an AI, whereas most AIs were posing as humans if they had an Avatar body.

"Do you really think that it would be a good idea?" he asked her finally.

"I think we all want them to see what they have done to Delphi and the other destroyed colonies," she said," Kind of like showing the Germans the KZs after WWII. They are going to know what they have done."

Ryan sighed. He had seen the images from the destroyed colonies. It was like watching the movies from Hiroshima and Nagasaki in color. Or the images from Sidney after Terrorists detonated a 500 kt nuke in the city in 2043.

Worse still was that he had nightmares about the images, of failing in his duty as President. But he knew that he hadn't failed. He and the whole Terran Union had been manipulated by the Shadows.

"Lets hope the vids have the same effect on the Minbari as they have on us."

"They will," Cortana said confidently," They will."


	30. Chapter 30

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Twenty Eight

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President Ryan looked at the nine members of the Gray Council, not even slightly looking at the images from Delphi. He didn't want to see those images again. He was already seeing them in his dreams. It was worse than anything he had seen during the invasions of Dilgar occupied planets during the Dilgar War, when he had still been a Marine.

Sometimes he wished that he was still in the Corps, but an injury during the final invasion of the Dingar homeworld had forced him to leave the Corps as Gunnery Sergeant. He had than chosen to enter politics. Six years as Representative, before becoming Senator of Maine and eventually being elected as President of the Terran Union.

"Why are you showing us these images," one of the members of the Council, Delenn asked with a voice than clearly showed the horror she felt from seeing those images.

She wasn't the only one. Every member of the Council, even the Warroirs were shocked and looked at them in horror. The horror of orbital bombardment. Corpses of people who where looking normal if looking at the torso, but were reduced to burned skeletons below.

Skeletons who were still in the position they had been when the orbital bombardment had hit. Some of them sitting in cars, some of them standing in buses, arms raised to hold onto something.

Images of people who where screaming in pain when the skin fell of their bodies. Inhuman howls of pain coming from surviving Morphs, wails coming from normal humans and just plain shrieks from Dilgar.

The same horrors mankind had first seen in 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Ryan closed his eyes for a moment, trying to shut the sounds and images away, as he had seen similar scenes during the Invasions by himself.

"I need you to understand that each of the colonies and each of the victims of the attacks have a name, a face."

He closed his eyes again after saying that before the continued.

"Orbital bombardment looks clean from orbit. But has anyone of you bothered to look at the target areas after commercing the bombardments? Have you?"

He stood up and glared at the Warriors.

"This is worse than anything I have ever seen before. And I have been a Marine during the Dilgar War and the Invasions of Dilgar occupied worlds."

His glares intensified.

"You have killed FIVE MILLION CIVILLIANS OUT OF HURT PRIDE! FIVE MILLION LIFES! FIVE MILLION INNOCENT PEOPLE WHO HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH A GOD DAMNED COMPUTER ERROR!"

Ryan pulled himself together. He hadn't wanted to scream at the Minbari, but the images had just been too much. Again he closed his eyes and breathed in deep as he slumped back in his chair.

"Five million," he whispered.

The Minbari were taken aback. First they had been forced to watch the images from the destroyed colonies and than Ryan, who had looked calm and collected had literally exploded.

Compared to those images, the destruction on Minbar were small. What were five million compared to about ten thousands? And had they really stared all this just because of hurt pride?

Dukhat was sure of that. The humans had been manipulated to shoot at the _Valen'sha_, but the Minbari had been so arrogant that they had reacted without knowing the facts. Weren't they the chosen of the Vorlons? Dukhat wasn't all that sure anymore.

The Vorlons hadn't contacted the Minbari during the entire cause of the War. The Warriors had taken this as validation for their attacks. But when the Terran Union had counterattacked, they had thought that the Vorlons would help them if things got to desperate. Than the Attack on Minbar had occurred and the Vorlons hadn't come.

The Warriors only reacted with being more boneheaded than normal. They had pressed the attacks, but lost every time.

"I don't want to see those images anymore," Ryan said finally to break the silence," Neither on any Terran colony, nor on a Minbari controlled planet. We need this peace. And we need to work together."

The Warriors looked up and at Ryan.

"We were manipulated by the Shadows," Ryan continued," That makes them our enemies. According to Lennon, the Shadows are you enemies too. They wanted that we destroy each other. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

Dukhat wanted to answer, but a sudden movement let him look over Ryans shoulder and at one of the Secret Service agents, who were Ryan body guards.

The mans hand reached into his suit as Ryan noticed Dukhats glance. He turned around just in time to see Agent Dawson drawing his gun with a plain look on his face.

"Dwason, what..."

He couldn't say more as Dawson pointed his weapon at Dukhat's head. Only with the reaction speed of a Morph, Ryan acted. He shot from his seat, directly into the way between Dawson and Dukhat as Dawson pulled the trigger.

The gun barked once and a classical 9mm bullet left the barrel of the gun. The bullet impacted into Ryans shoulder, tearing into his flesh, shattering the shoulder bones, before coming out on the other side, its course changed so that she only managed a grazing shot on Dukhat's head.

While this only seemed to happen in slow motion for Ryan, the next didn't. Several Minbari warriors pulled their weapons and pointed them at Dawson.


	31. Chapter 31

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Twenty Nine

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Ryan grit his teeth and growled low as the medic of _Air Force One_ set his shoulder right and placed it in a forcefield cast. Ryan knew that he was fortunate that it had been a shot-through and that the slug hadn't stopped after shattering his shoulder blade. It also could have been that the bullet had changed course a bit more and wrecked havoc with his inner organs or something similar. It all had happened before.

Than he signed as the pain killers set in and he only felt a strange pressing sensation from his shattered shoulder as other forcefields set the shattered bones right without the need of surgery for the healing. Other drugs were injected directly into the would to speed up the knitting of the bone and the healing of muscles and skin.

It all happened while Dukhat watched. Delenn had wanted to be there too, but she and four other members had to stop the Warriors for ripping apart _Air Force One_.

"I owe you my life."

Ryan nodded as the medic continued to hover around him, absently gazing as the small patch on Dukhat head, where the bullet had gazed him, before smalling into a bulkhead.

"I guess I do," he answered.

Again there was a silence.

"Why?"

"Why I saved your life?"

Dukhat nodded in a surprisingly human gesture.

"I could say that I did it because I want peace," Ryan said and sighed," But that would be a lie."

Dukhat blinked a few times and than gave Ryan a questioning look.

"To tell the truth, I don't really know why I did it. But I guess that my instincts had something to do with it."

"Instincts?"

Ryan nodded.

"I'm a Morph. My instincts are a strong guidance line in my life, just like with any other Morph. More so than other humans."

Again Dukhat blinked.

"I don't understand," he said and leaned forward," You are not human."

Ryan chuckled and than growled low in pain as it caused some movement in his shoulder.

"I am genetically a perfect human being. My genome is that same as that of any other human. It's just that a number of genes, normally inactive are active in the body of a Morph, resulting in the fact that we look like we are part animal. It is like this since about two hundred fifty years ago."

He sighed.

"Back in the last half of the 20th century we detonated a good number of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere of Earth to test them."

Dukhat looked horrified at the thought of that happening.

"It's an acknowledged theory that the radioactivity in the environment caused his, uhm... mutation."

Before Duhkat could say anything more one of the other secret Service Agents entered the med bay and gave Ryan a small letter.

"We found this in Dawson's cabin."

Ryan's eyes narrowed and started to read the letter. Than he looked up.

"It looks like the Centauri tried to prevent peace between us again."

Dukhat's face darkened and Ryan looked at his other bodyguard.

"I want Colonel Jukov to pass a message to Langley. Operation Judas is a go."

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Alfred Bester stood at the large window front of his apartment on Centauri Prime, in one of the buildings of the Terran Union Embassy and looked at the large city.

Every time he stood here, he couldn't shake the impression that the city looked much like Rome had looked during the Roman Empire. Everything in this city looked like it. And it had the same negative things to it as Rome had had.

As Cultural Attaché he knew this much better than anyone else in the Embassy. Well, at least nearly anyone. Things were in motion under the surface and his intelligence contacts painted a clear picture about it.

For a few moments he wondered if the Centauri knew that the Cultural Attaché traditionally was the designation of the highest ranking Intelligence Agent of a nation. But he doubted it. The Centauri may have one of the most effective intelligence networks of the races in Known Space, but it all paled before the humint and elint networks of the Terran Union.

His thoughts went towards the information he had from his agents in House Refa and the bugs planted near Lord Refa himself. Like all bugs planted everywhere on this planet, they were bound to bring the corpses of the Centauri aristocracy to the daylight for the CIA and Mossad. Especially those of Lord Refa.

But it had been a pity that those bugs hadn't been there before the sneak attack on Edding or a few days ago, as they were brand new.

Refa was up to something and Bester would give everything he could if he had something like the telepaths of the other races.

"Al, come to bed," a voice said behind him, breaking him from his thoughts.

A smile played on his face as he slowly turned around to look at his bed and the catgirl inside.

"I think I'll do just that," he said and slowly undressed before slipping into his bed to his wife.

She giggled and pulled the blanket over their heads.

"Have you wicked way with me, you sly racoon."


	32. Chapter 32

Changed Circle

by Warringer

Chapter Thirty

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Lord Refa was furious. The nerve of those thrice damned Terrans. Why couldn't they just continue with their War against the Minbari? Everything had been perfect.

Minbari and Terrans were killing each other and he was slowly working his way towards the throne of the Emperor. He even had managed to get that idiot Cartagia to loose any chance to get to the throne he had. It was interesting what one could find if they dug deep enough.

And than the news about a string of accidents in factories and docks controlled by the Refa Family. It all looked as if it was inability of those who were involved into the accidents, most of them getting killed or maimed in the process, but Refa knew better.

It had to be the revenge of those blasted Terrans. Refa wasn't like most other Centauri, he didn't underestimate the Terrans just because they were a young race. Oh no. His ancestors had made the error of underestimate the Narn and those had been able to beat the Centauri off their planet.

No, he wasn't making the same error. No, he chose to listen to an old saying coming from Earth of all things.

'Those who are not learning from past mistakes are bound to repeat them.'

He wouldn't. He knew how advanced the technology of the Terrans was. The had annihilated two Primus and several Vorchan with just one of their Fast Attack Cruisers. And hew know ho effective the spy nets of the Terrans were. Much more effective than any spy net of the Centauri. The history of the Terrans had resulted in that.

He had studied some of the Terran history and read books of the Terrans. It was strange that even he could learn from them. Machiavellis 'The Price' had been an eyeopener for him and showed him many new ways to make sure that he would come out on top.

It was fate that he would become the next Emperor of the Centauri Republic. And he would make sure that this fate would come to him.

Little did he know what fate awaited him in reality.

--------------------------------------------------------

He slowly opened his eyes and breathed in deep. His eyes fell onto the scenery in front of him and he smiled a little at it. The Centauri knew how to sculpture the land, but they weren't quite as good as the landscape architects of his homeland. He was pretty sure that they had a good few thousand years more experience to the Centauri.

He came up from his meditation position and closed his eyes again as he breathed in deep, his calm even deepening as he did so. His arms spread to the sides he looked up into the air and opened his eyes again, before launching himself into a slow kenpo kata. It was a ritual he had done every time before he did his job.

For a moment he forgot about the implications of his job, his mind coming to a much better focus with himself and the surroundings.

He had been on Centauri Prime for a few years now, doing his job and getting payed very good. He was known to be the best in his line of work on Centauri Prime, maybe even in Known Space. But he didn't really care about that. He didn't know why, but he didn't care.

He needed a few minutes to complete the kata, than he turned to look at the area below. A beautiful landscape with a Centauri mansion in its center. How much it looked like an old roman mansion.

Again he breathed in deep, walking over to his hover car, pulling out his chosen tool of his trade, an old Arctic Warfare Magnum with attached scope and forcefield based silencer. It was all he needed.

Slowly he walked back to the spot he had meditated before, standing on the place, pulling the butt of the AWM to his shoulder. He didn't change the alignment of the scope as he looked through it, the cross hairs coming to a slow wobbling stop on the target.

He calmed himself down more than before and held his breath. The trigger finger tightened and after a few moments he pulled the trigger. The gun barked and the projectile speed towards hits target. He didn't even bother to confirm that he had hit his target. He knew perfectly well that he had hit it. Even over nearly a mile distance.

He slowly placed the rifle to the ground and bowled into the direction of his target.

The Kamikaze, the Devine Wind, had found another target in Lord Refa.

--------------------------------------------------------

Bester winced slightly as he looked at the picture in front of him. The Kamikaze was really one of the best. He had proved it once again.

Just one thing bothered him and everyone else in the various intelligence agencies of the world. No one knew who he was. Or if he was even a 'he'. Was he a normal human or a Morph?

Only one thing was known. That he came from Japan, the weapon he used, an antique Arctic Warfare Magnum, and that he had a one hundred percent success rate.

Which brought him to the pictures. Bester had gotten them from one of their moles in the Centauri Intelligence. It was the same as numerous other kills of various Centauri nobles. Hell, Bester was even sure that The Kamikaze had worked for Refa before.

And now Refa's brain had been removed from his head through a very large hole in the back of his head. Like all other kills of The Kamikaze, he had used a special mercury round, fired from the antique Arctic Warfare.

Bester sighed and closed the folder, before deleting it.

That concluded 'Operation Judas'.

--------------------------------------------------------

"What do you want?"

Sari Cora, head of the Cora Family whirled around, looking at the face of a human. How had he come in here? Since the dead of Refa, he had locked down his estate. And now this human had somehow entered the room.

"Who are you," the middle aged Centauri asked, trying to keep the raising panic from his voice.

The human just smiled and bowed slightly.

"You may call me Mr. Morgan. And I want to offer my service and those of my associates."


	33. Chapter 33

Changed Circle

Babylon 5 Year One

by Warringer

Chapter Thirty Two

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Colonel John Sheridan looked at the holographic projection of Babylon 5, the last few years going through his head.

He had been promoted after the end of the Minbari War and jumped over the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, mostly due to the destruction of the _Black_ _Star_ and his part in the Peace Talks.

Shortly after the Declaration of Peace, then-President Ryan had set the Babylon Project into motion, to help preventing tragic mistakes like the one that lead to the Minbari War by having all Ambassadors of the races in Known Space at the same place. Kinda like a modern version of the old United Nation, the predecessor of the Terran Union.

The first three Babylon station had failed spectacularly, blowing up during construction. Everyone blamed the Shadows of cause, since they seemed to have an interest in seeing a project like this to fail. But Ryan hadn't given up. Babylon 4 had been finished, but before it could be opened for commercial traffic, it disappeared without a trace and again the Shadows were blamed.

This lead to another strategy for Babylon 5. During the Minbari War the Pentagon had ordered another Battle Plate to be build, but her construction was nixed about three years into the construction with a half finished Battle Plate. Ryan had pulled a good number of strings after that, saving the half finished Battle Plate from scrapping and used the funds to buy it on raw material cost and than asked some favors from Dukhat in financing the construction of Babylon 5 from the Battle Plate hull.

The result was the Station that now hung in L5 of Eridani III and its suns.

Eight kilometers in diameter, one and a half kilometer high, hundreds of external docking ports for commercial traffic. It's own small scale dry dock for ships up to one kilometer maximum dimension. Hidden Weapons mounts that could take on four ships like the _Black_ _Star_ at the same time. And all this was topped by the large dome structure on one end of the Station. Eight Kilometer in diameter and about a kilometer high, above an artificial landscape that seemed to be somewhere in Europe.

Sheridan could see the small one kilometer diameter lake in the center of the landscape surrounded by something that looked like a town. The edge of the landscape was something that looked like a hundred meter high cliffs surrounding the landscape.

Sheridan had read the memo on Babylon 5 and knew that about four hundred thousand people could live in the 'town' and that several parts of it were specially designed after buildings of the races that lived in them.

But seeing the station with his own eyes was something else that reading about it. It was a great station. Somehow Sheridan knew that she would become very important in the future.

--------------------------------------------------------

Sometimes Lieutenant Commander Susan Ivanova thought she should start drinking. Today was such a time. She was second in command of the military personal of the station and as XO she had to deal with most of the day to day stuff.

She grumbled low and even if she was a normal human, she sounded very much like the proverbial Russian bear. Not all that surprising, considering that she was the kid of two Bear Morphs and just happened to be one of those freak coinsurances when a normal human was born from a Morph couple.

Most of her subordinates suddenly started to sweat and no one of them dared to even say one word as Ivanova glared into holographic projection of Traffic Command, her primary assignment, a cub of hot tea in her hand.

She had several reasons for her bad mood. First the Picket for the Eridani system, the 42rd Fast Attack Squadron had just arrived and a good number of merchant men were getting extremely nervous about it. Second they were awaiting the Ambassadors of the Terran Union to take over civil command of the station.

Third they were also awaiting the Ambassador of the Minbari Federation, something Ivanova didn't look forward for. Her brother had died during the Battle of Earth, being a Su-36 pilot. And last was the awaited arrival of the Vorlon Ambassador. And absolutely no one knew anything about them. There was just very little data they had gotten from the Minbari.

It was not a good day for Ivanova.

--------------------------------------------------------

Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Sinclair wondered if he shouldn't have remained the pilot of a Strategic Bomber. It was less strenuous than being the CAG of a station like Babylon 5. He had to deal with four squadrons worth of Su-36 Black Knights and two squadrons worth of Phalax Drones, instead of just one Enola Gay bomber.

Not to mention the biggest assembly of overgrown egos he had seen in his life. The Senate or the Congress was nothing against this. He was just glad that Masako was here too.

He cleared his throat.

"Okay people," he started as the noise in the briefing room finally died down," it seems that we are getting reinforcements today."

A pilot made a joke and Sinclair shook his head at it. Overgrown egos.

"The 42rd Fast Attack Squadron. Five Block 3 Ticonderoga's with _Lexington_ as the lead vessel."

That managed to cut of all conversation.

"And Colonel Sheridan is the commander of the 42rd. So don't think that you could play glory hog with Raiders in the next time. That is Sheridan's job."

There was a low murmur in the assembled pilots.

"Another thing. Ex-President Ryan himself will be Ambassador of the Terran Union and the civilian commander of the station."

That on e the other side caused a few cheers going through the rows of pilots.


	34. Chapter 34

Changed Circle

Babylon 5 Year One

by Warringer

Chapter Thirty Three

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Colonel John Sheridan, Erwin Rommel, Ambassador Mark Ryan and his Secret Service bodyguard left the airlock and entered the large reception area of the Ambassadorial Docking Area.

"Welcome aboard Babylon 5, Mr. President," the military commander of the station said with a smile.

Ryan gave the man a wry smile and shook his outstretched hand.

"It's only Ambassador these days, General," he answered.

Brigadier General Don Redhorse, a native American of the Cheyenne, chuckled slightly and nodded.

"You are still the President in the minds of most people in the Navy, sir."

"So I've been told."

Ryan decided that he liked the normal human. He had read the native Americans file and knew that he liked to take risks, but took good care of the people under his command. So he had rather decided to save his last command during the Minbari War and get away, rather than taking the risk to take on two Sharlins with his battle ship, through both ships had been heavily damaged and could have been destroyed by him.

Redhorse's turned to Sheridan and Rommel and continued to smile.

"I see the Pentagon wants to have is well protected if they send you, Colonel."

Sheridan looked a little embarrassed at that and also shook the outstretched hand.

"I think so, sir."

A nod of Redhorse was directed at the avatar of Lexington's AI.

"Rommel."

"General."

Redhorse turned back to Ryan and than looked towards the command crew.

"Let me introduce the members of the command crew, sir. Lieutenant Commander Susan Ivanova, my second in command and head of Traffic Control. Colonel Jeffrey Sinclair, the Commander Air Group of the station. Chief Michael Garibaldi, the head of the Babylon Police. And Alfred Bester, the... uhm... Cultural Attaché of the Terran Union."

Ryan looked at the Raccoon Morph introduced to him as Alfred Bester. He had meet Bester once, when he was still Attaché on Centauri Prime, just after the War, when Ryan had an unofficial talk with the Emperor. Bester was a good man for his job as middleman between Ryan, the CIA, NSA and Mossad. Through that grin of his was really making Ryan shudder.

"Doctor Franklin couldn't be here, as he is currently in a operation and couldn't make it in time."

Ryan nodded.

"I think I will meet him soon enough."

--------------------------------------------------------

Axel Fowley growled low in the back of his throat. This was not his day.

He was currently walking along the shore of Lake Ur, the artificial lake of Babylon City, as the city beneath the dome of Babylon 5 was called. He took a peddle from the ground and flipped it over the water, while his look went to the replica of the HMS Beagle.

He had probed all of his informants and tried to pull some information out of the rat that had to have seen the murder of the dealer, Edward Miller, in Down Below.

But he hadn't been able to say much. He had maundered something about a man who had changed his looks, but Axel didn't thing he could trust that, since the rat had been so stoned that he had seen someone named Gothwrain or something like that. Seemed to be some sort of Bogey man for the rat morphs.

After that Axel had tried to dig up some news. Miller was known to have dealt with several drugs, but it also seemed that he had gotten a client who had a strong demand for cocaine. According to his informants he had made some money through him and had tried to get him to pay more. But it seemed that it had cost his life.

The wound that had killed Miller was also strange. Quincy, the coroner of the station, had noticed that the weapon used seemed to be some sort of staff. A material analysis of some material left behind, indicated a very advanced alloy and one of Quincy's assistants had said that the imprint of the staff looked like a Minbari Combat Staff.

Another thing Axel didn't like about all this. There were about three thousand Minbari in the Minbari Quarters of Babylon City, about a hundred of them being Warriors. Everyone of them could be the suspect. Or someone who had managed to get one of the Combat Staffs from a Warrior.

More research had pulled up that cocaine was related to a drug used by the Minbari as pain killer. The data also said that it was multiple times more effective than the Minbari drug and also made the user highly addicted.

Axel shook his head.

It looked like he had to track a cocaine addicted, shape shifting Minbari Warrior.

Sometimes he wondered if he should have taken that job at Wonder World in California as Chief of Park Security.


	35. Chapter 35

Changed Circle

Babylon 5 Year One

by Warringer

Interlude

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Slowly the large Willsberg class dreadnought _Fearless_ made its way through jump space, five even larger Ithacus class freighters following her.

It was the time of the Dilgar War and the five Ithacus were carrying manufacturing equipment for a forward base of the Terran Union, while the large Willsberg just happened to go the same way after undergoing a refit.

_Fearless_ had participated in a good number of battles in the cause of the war and had needed the refit after taking several hits from a Dilgar Sekhmet heavy cruiser. Her systems were up to date and she was ready to get back into the war.

But she would never get to her intended destination as one single member of _Fearless_' crew members had other plans.

Multiple shuttles detached from the large dreadnought before they latched at the surface of the freighters. Several minutes nothing happened. Than the six Terran vessels left their course, leaving the jump space beacon network, traversing deeper into the unknown depth of jump space.

--------------------------------------------------------

The man on the bridge of _Fearless_ smiled as he looked into the swirly red space surrounding the ship, his ship. He had needed years to perfect his plan and finally put it into action, the five Ithacus were only the icing on his personal cake they would give him the industrial capability he needed.

A side glance went towards the holographic screen that currently showed the face of a nondescript man.

"We have secured the ships, sir. Everything is proceeding according to your plans."

"Excellent. The crews are imprisoned?"

"Yes, sir. All have been put into their quarters and we cut all communication channels between the quarters."

The man on the Fearless nodded.

"You may proceed with the release of the drugs and the brainwashing. We are going to need the crews for the future."

"Yes, sir."

With that the connection was cut and the man nodded to himself. Than he flickered out of existence as he shut down his hologram.

The AI known as Tarkin had great plans for the future.


	36. Chapter 36

Changed Circle

Babylon 5 Year One

by Warringer

Chapter Thirty Four

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Delenn couldn't help but be awed by Babylon 5. The approach path of her Lintira shuttle from the Jump Gate to the Ambassadorial Docking Area of the station had brought her around the station and over the large dome that span over the large park like area on one side.

Sure she had seen a few holographic images taken by Worker caste members coming from Babylon 5 when she was opened for commercial travel six month ago. But seeing it by herself in reality was something completely different.

The station was different to the other four projected stations of the Babylon Project and she had a strange feeling as she looked over the edges of the station and the large hatched areas on the edges.

Her shuttle had been guided into the Docking Area and the last few hundred meter were done by a tractor beam from the station pulling the shuttle through one of the famed Terran force fields. A short glance to the sides showed that there was a large Terran Cruiser docked with the same area of the station as she was guided into.

Her shuttle sat down in one of the smaller docking days of the Ambassadorial Docking Area, large enough to hold two Lintiras.

She smiled a bit as she noticed that she was awaited by President, or rather, Ambassador Ryan, two other humans and a Minbari.

A few minutes later she left the shuttle and the Minbari bowed to greet her.

"Satai Delenn, wel..."

She stopped him and shook her head.

"It's Ambassador on this station," she said knowing fully well that the humans knew that she was a Satai and a member of the Gray Council. The other races on the other side didn't know and wouldn't know.

The young Minbari bowed again.

"My appologies, Ambassador Delenn. Welcome aboard Babylon 5. I am Lenir."

Delenn nodded at Lenir.

"Please call me Delenn."

Behind Lenir, Ryan showed a grin and forced down a chuckle, before walking past Lenir and gave Delenn a short bow. Ryan had used similar bows during the Peace Talks at the end of the War and Delenn knew that they originated from an area called Japan on Earth.

"Welcome aboard, Ambassador Delenn," Ryan said and pronounced the word 'Ambassador'," I hope you will like my little brainchild."

Delenn looked a bit puzzled about the word 'brainchild' but than nodded.

"I think I will enjoy my stay here."

Ryan also nodded and than pointed at the third of the other humans. Delenn already knew the second human as he had already been Ryan body guard during the Peace Talks.

He had dark colored skin and had long raven black hair, falling past his shoulders. He was dressed in a normal Terran Union uniform.

"This is the military commander of Babylon 5, Brigadier General Don Redhorse. He used to be the commander of the _Sitting_ _Bull_ during the War."

Delenn nodded at the native American, who nodded back.

"Welcome aboard Babylon 5, Ambassador."

--------------------------------------------------------

Ivanova was on her third cup of tea this hour as another call rang through Traffic Command.

"Jump Gate activation," one of the technicians, a Bunny Morph like everyone in TC besides Ivanova, called out," We are getting a code."

The technician seemed to swallow.

"It's Vorlon, ma'am."

"Great," Ivanova muttered under her breath before giving orders," Let me see this ship."

A holographic image appeared above the stationary projector in the center of TC, moving the holo of the traffic situation into a corner, taken from one of the remote sensory station of to the Terran build Jump Gate.

"Looks like a squid," Ivanova said dryly," I don't like squids."

The ship indeed looked like a squid, a long main body with four leaf like structures on the stern, while four tentacle like structures were coming from the bow. The hull seemed to be alive and had a strange color mix of yellow and black with several parts glowing in a green or blue light.

"Most of the scans are blocked," another of the 'Bridge Bunnies' said," But we are getting a good number of passive scans done."

Ivanova nodded and looked at the data appearing around the hologram. Passive NEDAR scans showed that the gravimetric drive seemed to be very high powered, more powerful than any drive ever build by the Terran Union. Through there was no way to tell what sort of energy source they used. There were only few neutrinos created by the energy source and the data on it seemed to indicate some sort of Zero Point Energy Source.

Other scans didn't show much more than that, only that the ship massed more than a Terran vessel of the same size.

Ivanova drank another sip from her tea.

"Audio connection to the Vorlon ship."

A technician gave her a signal and she spoke.

"Vorlon vessel, this is Babylon Traffic Control. You are cleared for approach vector 221 point 065 for the Ambassadorial Docking Area. Like requested we have prepared an isolation docking port for you."

The response message just contained one word.

"Yes."


	37. Chapter 37

Changed Circle

Babylon 5 Year One

by Warringer

Chapter Thirty Five

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"Well, shit."

"Houston, we got a problem."

"Maybe we shouldn't have followed those requests of the Vorlons."

Garibaldi and Rommel nodded at Cortana, while Ryan used his cell phone to call for an Ambulance and Redhorse and Sheridan ran towards the limb form of the Vorlon Ammbassador. They had just entered the private docking bay where the Vorlon transport of the Ambassador had landed.

"What about the security cameras?" Garibaldi asked and looked at Cortana, who had taken over the duty of the Stations AI.

The Avatar with the holograms floating around her shook her head.

"The Vorlons requested to remove any surveillance device from their Ambassadors Docking Bay and quarters."

Garibaldi frowned and walked towards the place where Redhorse and Sheridan were trying to open the Ambassadors encounter suit without much success. He closed his eyes for a few moments and breathed in and out a few times. Than the frown deepened.

"What would Jeff want here?" he asked no one in particular before reaching for his own cell phone. "Mitch? Yes, I need the CSI in Ambassadorial Bay Zero Three. - We got a situation down here."

--------------------------------------------------------

Axel narrowed his eyes as he walked through a part of Down Below that was close to the Ambassadorial Docking Area. The number of aliens in this part of the Station was larger than elsewhere.

This area was some kind of market. Everywhere he looked he could see something strange to him. Smells also were strange and he couldn't work out how many different new smells he noticed.

Than he stopped. There was a sudden strong smell of fuel and a man in Navy uniform made his way through the crowd down here. For a few moments he looked as the man stumbled past him and he could sense a faint smell of cocaine.

Than he remembered the man. Major Sinclair, the CAG of Babylon 5. But something was off here.

Axel decided that he needed to follow him, but after a few meters the crowd got thicker and than Sinclair simply disappeared. His scent disappeared also, even the faint scent of cocaine.

"Damn it," he growled and made his way back to one of the elevators.

--------------------------------------------------------

"How is he?" Redhorse asked and looked at Dr. Franklin.

"Hell if I knew," Franklin said," none of our medical sensors are managing to get through this suit. And you know that the Vorlons didn't want us to remove the suit."

He sighed and looked over to one of his assistants. Force fields in the room where holding another atmosphere around the limb encounter suit of the Vorlon.

"We are trying to set up some military grade sensors for this, but I doubt that we get more with that."

"Any idea why?"

Franklin glanced over to Redhorse.

"I'm a doctor, not a quantum physicist."

Redhorse shook his head and smiled a little.

"I bet you waited to say that."

"All my life."

"So," Redhorse asked serious again," Any idea what happened?"

"Well, we found a very small hole in the suit. Looks like someone injected a toxin into the atmosphere of the suit, effectively poisoning the Ambassador."

Redhorse looked over to the encounter suit.

"We are currently trying to analyze the remains in the toxin we found in the hole. But we have a few problems. We may find out what it was, but it will be hell to find an anti-toxin for it. We know nothing about the Vorlons metabolism."

"So we got nothing, aside from a dying Vorlon in the med station."

--------------------------------------------------------

Rommel didn't really know what to think or do. Sure he was an AI and could fall back onto the computing power of the _Lexington_, but this was something that he couldn't run through his numerous quantum processors. So he did the only thing that he knew would bring him at least something.

He ran. He ran away from a flock of female Minbari who were after him. Or rather his imagined genetic material. This was one of the instances where he knew that it was a bad idea to enter the Minbari part of the station in his human avatar. Next time he would use his Fennek avatar.

As he continued to run towards the military docking ports he could hear the screams of the female Minbari Warriors and was glad that he turned off his translation subroutines, while wondering just how much stamina they had.

Somewhere in the back of his subroutines he knew that they wondered the same about him.


	38. Chapter 38

Changed Circle

Babylon 5 Year One

by Warringer

Chapter Thirty Six

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"I knew this would be one of the worst days in my life," Ivanova said and glared at the large hologram in the center of Traffic Control.

"Activating Jumpgate defenses," one of the Bridge Bunnies said, turned towards her console," Defense turrets online and ready for engagement."

There were a few little known facts about human build Jumpgates, like the one that graced Epsilon Eridani since Babylon 5 had been build. The more stocky design of the Jumpgate struts were based on practical thing and a few military theories, while all alien races thought it was something with the design itself and that the Terran Union wasn't able to build them like everyone else.

But they were wrong. Terran Jumgates were designed with the inherit systems to defend themselves. It had been early in one of the early conflicts with local races, that the TU had found out that no one would attack a Jumpgate. Now each Jumpgate strut was designed with integrated weapon turrets, active sensors and guidance systems. As a whole the four struts of a Jumpgate had the half firepower of a Ticonderoga and no one would attack a Jumpgate, because it would throw the jump beacon network out of whack.

Now was one of the times when Ivanova wished that she could simply start to fire at whatever came through.

And Redhorse took this moment to enter TC, stopping in his tracks just inside the door, staring at the hologram with wide eyes. He needed about half a minute to find his voice and even that he was barley understandable.

"Someone please tell me that that is a sick joke."

He looked around very hopefully, but Ivanova and the Bridge bunnies looked back at him, their faces telling that they weren't joking. Ivanova also shook her head.

"That really is a Star Destroyer out there?"

Ivanova nodded and Redhorse closed his eyes. He didn't know what to do, laugh or cry.

A ship that looked like the carbon copy of the Star Destroyer from 'Star Wars – Episode 4: A new Hope', was now on its way towards Babylon 5.

"Any chance that some of those Jedi-nuts build that ship?"

With that question Redhorse thought back at the 'Exodus of Jedi' as it was called in Pop-culture, when more than fifty thousand 'Jedi', 'Warsies' or 'Lucasists' had left Earth to depart to space unknown in sub-light ships back in the late 21st century.

And now this. This was a bit too much coincidence for him.

Ivanova shrugged.

"I have no idea. We haven't hailed them yet."

"Scans?"

"Show not really much," Cortana said, having been there all the time, like any good AI," Just the normal systems. They are using a very powerful Ion Engines, something that looks like fusion reactors, artificial gravity based on the Podklednow specifica. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"Than hail them."

Ivanova nodded and looked towards one of the Bridge Bunnies, who nodded and opened a channel.

"This is Major Susan Ivanova of Babylon 5 Traffic Control. To unknown vessel, please identify yourselves."

Ivanova repeated herself two times, before the comm technician looked back at her.

"We are getting a response," he said and activated a smaller holoscreen next to the display showing the Star Destroyer."

The hologram showed a being that looked like a Lion Morph at the first glance, but than there were a pair of massive fangs coming from the upper jaw, making it look like a Smilodon. The being was also clothed in something that looked very much like the uniform of an Imperial officer from 'Star Wars'.

"This is Captain Dan Korin," the being said with a voice that had a massive growling," of the Imperial Star Destroyer _Flaming_ _Sword_."

Redhorse glanced over to Ivanova and he could see how her eyebrow twitched in a pattern that looked remarkably like SOS. He also somehow knew that she would have wanted to scream at Captain Korin or ripping into a piece of furniture. Instead her hand just crushed her tea mug, out of line of sight for Korin and without a sound for him, thanks to noise filtering from Cortana.

A glance back at Korin gave Redhorse a comparison with part of his memory. Korin looked very much like a Smilodon Morph would look like, if there had been any. But there weren't.

Either Korin was a descendant of the 'Jedi' formed from the environment of their new home planet or he was a member of a race that had evolved from a Smilodon like big cat on another planet and somehow got influenced by human pop culture, in this case 'Star Wars'. Not really something unheard of, considering that one race that was still bugging every human with the question 'Who killed J.R.?'

Ivanova forced a smile.

"And what are your intentions, Captain?"

Korin smiled and showed the rows of his big pearly whites.

"Our Imperious Leader has heard of this place 'Babylon 5' from traders that crossed our space. We are here to start diplomatic relations. The _Flaming_ _Sword_ is to carry Ambassador to this station and act as his personal transport."

"Hoo boy..." Redhorse could hear one of the Bridge Bunnies, a Lieutenant Backett, mutter.

In his opinion Backett had hit the nail dead center.


	39. Chapter 39

Changed Circle

Babylon 5 Year One

by Warringer

Chapter Thirty Seven

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The Imperial March blared from the forcefield speakers of the Ambassadorial Landing Bay as the shuttle from the Star Destroyer _Flaming_ _Sword_ touched down in the center of the Bay.

Redhorse and Ivanova glared at the avatar of Cortana, while Ryan had a slight smile on his face.

"What?" Cortana asked and tried to look innocent," I thought it was the right idea. It's not like we have a Lambda shuttle touching down any day."

It wasn't really a surprise for Redhorse that Ivanova growled at the stations AI much like a bear would, considering her family.

Than he looked over to the shuttle, where the ramp opened and several white armored figures stepped out to line up left and right of the ramp.

"Oh goody," Ivanova said dryly," Stormies."

The white armor of the soldiers was in fact looking like Star Wars Stormtrooper armor, through it was tailored to the body of a Smilodon morph like sentient. From the look of it, even the tail was armored and the helmet of the armor was much more menacing than most things Ryan, Redhorse or Ivanova had seen. The huge blaster rifles only increased the menacing look.

"Well," Cortana said," It seems that those Stormies are taller than even Captain Idn Abbaz."

Redhorse nodded with a certain dread. The head of the Marine complement of Babylon 5, a Siberian Tiger morph was the tallest morph he had seen up to date and if those sentients were taller...

The Stormtroppers stood straighter as two more persons left the shuttle. One of them was Captain Korin in full Imperial uniform, the other was a woman in dark robes. While Korin seemed to be as tall at the Troopers, the woman was smaller, through she also was Smilodon like.

They strode towards the three humans and one AI and stopped a few meters in front of them, Korin stood straight, while the woman bowed slightly, showing a hint of a smile, or what seemed to be a smile.

"Greetings," the woman said with a pleasent voice, through it was underlayed with a constant growl," I am Kane Molon. Our Imperious Leader has appointed me to be the Ambassador of the Imperium to Babylon 5."

"Than I may welcome you aboard this station, Ambassador," Ryan said and returned the bow in a Japanese manner, much like most diplomats and politicians of the Terran Union did nowadays.

Molon smiled a little bit more.

"Thank you, Ambassador Ryan. Major Ivanova, General Redhorse."

"You have done your homework," Ryan said returning the smile.

"We have observed this part of space for a longer time," she answered," Through I am curious about the droid."

Cortana narrowed her eyes a little but restrained herself from any comment at this moment, as this was a First Contact situation. And who knew how fast these Imperium guys were pissed off...

"I think you are curious about the Imperium," Kolon continued.

"Yes we are," Ryan said and turned slightly to invite the Ambassador and the Captain to follow him," But I think we should go to a conference room for this."

"Yes we shall."

--------------------------------------------------------

"Hooo boy..."

Sheridan shook his head as he stared at the large screen in the Command Center of _Lexington_. His ship and the rest of the 42rd Fast Attack Squadron were currently covering space around the Star Destroyer, a ship that was half way between the Ticonderoga and Yamato class in length.

Next to him Rommel suddenly chuckled, causing most of the command crew to look at him.

"I have a link to Cortana at the moment," Rommel explained," She has just gotten the tale of the Imperials."

"And?"

_Lexington's_ AI chuckled a little more.

"It seems that the 'Lucasists' have stumbled over a wormhole in their STL ship and dropped out next to a planet with a Smilodon like native civiliszation and decided to land on the planet. According to the Ambassador, they heavily influenced the population with their 'culture' before dying out from native diseases before they could help themselves."

"Let me guess," Sheridan deadpanned," The natives than decided to pattern their civilization ofter the Galactic Empire after that?"

"No," Rommel declined," It seems they were more like the Republic, before they stumbled over a hostile race that was. A longer war pressed them to change to the Empire."

Sheridan shook his head.

"And how large is that 'Imperium'?"

"Ten major colonies, about twelve mining outposts and several bases, but the Ambassador didn't say much more about it."

Rommel stopped for a moment and than shook his head.

"Looks like we have to deal with the SD for a longer time."

"Huh?"

"It seems that it is the personal vessel of the Ambassador and goes where she goes."

"Hoooo boy..." Sheridan heard one of his bridge crew, the rabbit morph Lieutenant Samantha Backett saying and just nodded at that.


End file.
